More Bad News from Two Continents for Menopause Hormones

Today's New England Journal of Medicine reports that new U.S. government numbers show a leveling off of breast cancer rates in 2004 following a dramatic decrease in 2003. Experts say that the leveling off shows the decrease in 2003 was not just a fluke - it was the year after millions of women stopped taking hormones because of a study released that linked hormones to higher risk for heart disease, stroke, and breast cancer. From 2001 to 2004, breast cancer rates fell almost 9 percent. The most common form of the disease, tumors fueled by hormones, dropped even more - by almost 15 percent among women ages 50 to 69. This is the group that was most likely to have been on hormone replacement therapy.

Many medical experts were skeptical about the numbers in the 2003 report by the National Cancer Institute and Dr. Peter Ravdin, a biostatistician at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But, says Ravdin, "The story has gotten stronger." Dr. Julie Gralow, spokesperson for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, says the new numbers in 2004 proves that the drop in the earlier year was not a fluke. "Because it didn't bump back up again," it supports the idea that the rate has stabilized at the new lower level.

The London journal The Lancet, posted results online of a United Kingdom study also looking at hormones for menopause. In their study of nearly one million women, those who took hormones after menopause were 20 percent more likely to develop ovarian cancer or die from it than women who never took hormone replacement products. Even with these staggering numbers, scientists and doctors are not changing the advice that women can use the lowest dose for the shortest time possible to relieve hot flashes and other menopause symptoms. Researchers at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute say hormone replacement therapy is a reasonable option for women between the ages of 50 and 59 experiencing severe symptoms of menopause. But they underscore that the pills - estrogen alone or estrogen and progestin in combination - should be taken in the lowest possible doses.