Almost five years ago, women received the bad news that estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) increased their risks of heart attack and stroke. Today researchers have reversed their position.My question is: Who paid for this study and were there conflicts of interests with the researchers? Of course, none of that information is readily available so we recommend that you read between the lines.
Researchers say that those women who take the hormones shortly after menopause may benefit. (The keyword here is "may"). This leaves the door open to broad interpretation. My second question is: What about those women who take hormones shortly after menopause who may not benefit? Should they still take the drug because big pharma says so?
Continuing analysis of the original data indicates that the researchers raised a false alarm for most women and that, if women begin taking the hormones shortly after menopause, the drugs do not raise the risk of heart disease and might even lower the risk for heart disease.
The latest findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, show that taking estrogen for seven years or more after menopause reduces calcification of the arteries - a key indicator of atherosclerosis - by as much as 60 percent. High levels of calcification are generally considered a predictor of increased heart attack risk.
The researchers now claim that the only group of women who are at significant risk from the drugs are those who delay taking them for at least 10 years after menopause. The research is based on the Women's Health Initiative, a federal study launched in the 1990s. (Has the WHI received any big grants or funding from big pharma lately?)
All the researchers agree that women should not fear using estrogen replacement therapy to mitigate menopausal symptoms. The current debate is over how long they may safely continue to do so.
Not so fast -- there is still an increased risk of breast cancer with age for estrogen when combined with progestin and it is not clear whether the risk outweighs the benefits.
It came as a shock in 2002 when researchers from the Women's Health Initiative reported that ERT actually increased risks of heart attack and stroke. Within a year of the report, the number of new prescriptions for estrogen fell by 68 percent as both physicians and patients shied away from the drugs.
The new study involved a subset of 1,064 women in the Women's Health Initiative study who were ages 50 to 59 and had undergone surgically induced menopause through a hysterectomy. Half were randomized to receive a Wyeth-produced estrogen called Premarin (made inhumanely from horse urine) and half a placebo.
The women were on the drugs for an average of 7 1/2 years. About a year after the study was stopped, physicians used CT scans to measure the buildup of calcium deposits, or atherosclerotic plaque, in their blood vessels.
Overall, they found, women taking estrogen had 42 percent less calcification of their arteries. Women who had taken at least 80 percent of their daily doses of the drug had 61 percent less calcification.
There is no mention of increased breast cancer risk to these 1,064 women as guinea pigs.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-estrogen21jun21,1,2029685.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo
