HRT boosts bones but raises cancer risk

HRT is tied with an increased risk of cancer and heart disease.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may lower the risk of bone fractures in older women but is also associated with a considerable increased risk of cancer and heart disease.

A large US trial called the Womens Health Initiative found that using estrogen-only or estrogen-plus-progestin female hormones during menopause caused more heart attacks and strokes than it prevented.

The findings published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, also highlighted that menopausal women who use HRT are also more likely to have a breast cancer than their counterparts who use non-hormonal methods to reduce their menopausal symptoms.

The new 15-year study which followed more than 160,000 women confirmed that taking female hormone pills may prevent osteoporosis and lower symptoms such as hot flashes in menopausal women.

However, the article added that the therapy also raises womens odds of developing different problems such as gallbladder disease, urinary incontinence and dementia.

We looked at all the published studies on hormone therapy for the prevention of chronic disease, said Dr. Heidi Nelson, who led the update. What is new here is, we've taken all the results from the last 10 years and tried to distill them into the latest, most current results and how they might apply to individuals.

She also emphasized that some protective effects of hormone replacement therapy found in some earlier researches have appeared to be weaker in recent reviews and studies.

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HRT boosts bones but raises cancer risk