Hormone Replacement Therapy

An international panel has concluded that, based on current evidence, there are questions about using hormone replacement therapy for more than relieving menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes.

Women whose breasts became tender after taking hormone replacement therapy had nearly twice the risk of developing breast cancer than women whose breasts did not become tender on the drugs, U.S. researchers said Monday. Breast tenderness may be a way to identify women who have a higher risk of developing breast cancer while taking hormone replacement therapy to treat menopause, Dr. Carolyn Crandall of UCLA and colleagues reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "We report that an increase in breast tenderness, easily detected by physicians or patients, identifies a population at particular risk for breast cancer," the researchers reported.

Government health officials on Wednesday began cracking down on Internet sales of custom-mixed hormones for menopausal women, a market born when doctors deemed prescription estrogen therapy too risky for many. But the Food and Drug Administration says these alternative hormone mixes are no safer and told seven makers to stop selling them. The FDA said it sent warning letters to the companies saying their claims about the "bio-identical hormone replacement therapy" -- or BHRT -- products are not supported by medical evidence and are considered false and misleading.

A sharp decline in U.S. breast cancer deaths in 2003 held steady the following year, providing further evidence that the drop is related to the large number of women who stopped hormone replacement therapy, researchers report today. Between 2001 and 2004, the number of breast cancer cases dropped 8.6% overall -- 11.8% among women older than 50, the primary consumers of the hormones, according to the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The types of breast tumors that occur after combination hormone replacement therapy in women going through menopause and in post-menopausal women tend to have a better prognosis than those after estrogen-only replacement therapy, say Swedish researchers. A team at Malmo University Hospital conducted a study involving 12,583 peri- or post-menopausal women whose medical records were linked to national cancer registries. Of the group, 513 had a history of breast cancer prior to enrollment.

HORMONES seemed like the answer for Nancy Adams when hot flashes began disrupting her sleep seven years ago. The little pill that she got from her doctor solved the night sweat problem and she slept like a baby once again. All went well -- "until," the L.A. resident says, "the study came out."

Patient treatment records from a large HMO show that the recent decline in breast cancer rates is linked to a sharp drop in use of hormone replacement therapy and not to reductions in the percentage of women getting mammograms, as many scientists had speculated, researchers said Tuesday. Dr. Andrew G. Glass and his colleagues at Kaiser Permanente Northwest in Portland, Ore.

Post-menopausal estrogen therapy does not appear to protect women in their 60s and older from heart disease, but researchers say it may have some protective effect for women in their 50s. The Women's Health Initiative, which conducted the research, stopped the analysis in March 2004 because of a higher risk of stroke among women taking estrogen. But further examination of the data shows that, at least for women between 50 and 59, the hormone may provide a boost to heart health.

Attorneys for a woman who claims she was diagnosed with breast cancer after taking Prempro told a federal jury Wednesday that drug maker Wyeth ignored repeated signals that the menopause drug could cause breast cancer. Lawyers for Wyeth said in their opening statement that the company warned Linda Reeves and her doctors about the potential breast cancer risks of Prempro and said no one could prove the drug caused her illness.

Women taking certain hormone replacement therapy may damage their hearing, scientists report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A study of 124 postmenopausal women found that those taking hormone replacement therapy that included progestin had poorer speech understanding than women who were not taking hormones or who were using estrogen only. The team was led by Dr. Robert D. Frisina at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y.