The Last Word On Hormone Therapy From the Women's Health Initiative

Back in 2002, a research study blew apart the widely held belief that hormone replacement therapy protected women from heart disease and other chronic ills.

Instead, the Women's Health Initiative study found that taking estrogen plus progestin hormone replacement therapy HRT actually increased a woman's risk of heart disease and breast cancer.

The study had a huge effect: Within months the number of women using HRT dropped by almost half.

A second WHI study published two years later reinforced the message, finding that taking estrogen alone also increased the risk of stroke, dementia and other problems.

But confusion over if, why and when to use HRT has lingered.

This week, the Women's Health Initiative published a final comprehensive report on its long, broad and deep look at women and HRT. The study, which was published in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, monitored the health of 27,347 postmenopausal women while they were in the two HRT randomized trials and in the years after. It sums up results that have been published piecemeal in more than 100 articles.

Dr. JoAnn Manson has been working on the Women's Health Initiative study for two decades.

Shots talked with Dr. JoAnn Manson, lead investigator of the Women's Health Initiative and a professor of medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health, to get the final word. She's been with the study since its birth in 1993. This is an edited version of that conversation.

What does this study tell us that we didn't know before about the benefits and risks of HRT?

The key point is that the results are now broken down by age and time since menopause. This is really what women and their clinicians have needed in order to interpret the findings and provide individualized care.

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The Last Word On Hormone Therapy From the Women's Health Initiative