Hormone therapy safe for younger women: study

Tue Apr 3, 2007 4:17 PM ET
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Younger women may be able to safely take hormone replacement therapy to treat menopause symptoms based on a new analysis of a big U.S. study that had raised alarms about health risks and driven down sales of treatment drugs, according to a report released on Tuesday.
A second look at the highly publicized 2002 study called the Women's Health Initiative, or WHI, suggests that women who begin hormone replacement therapy within 10 years of menopause may have less risk of heart attack than women who start hormone therapy later.
The results are "somewhat reassuring," said Dr. Jacques Rossouw, lead author of the study, which appears in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Rossouw, in a telephone interview, said hormone replacement therapy, known as HRT, still increases the risk of breast cancer and stroke in younger women but the absolute risk for that age group is low.
"Check your blood pressure and have regular mammograms. If you do those things, HRT is a reasonable option in women with severe menopause symptoms," said Rossouw, who is chief of the Women's Health Initiative branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.