Concerns of Increased Heart Disease Risk Due to Hormone Therapy Debunked

Women can better overcome their fear about hormone therapy now, as goes a study facts. In middle-aged postmenopausal women who had been screened for underlying diseases according to current guidelines, researchers found no increased risk of heart disease or type 2 diabetes with hormone therapy, reveals a study published in the journal THE NORTH AMERICAN MENOPAUSE SOCIETY (NAMS)

Hormone replacement refers to the use of synthetic estrogen and progesterone to replenish hormone levels in menopausal women. Menopause symptoms can effectively be cured with hormone therapy, HT but still some women have dual thoughts about going for one. A new study, however, dispels some of those fears, finding no link between HT use and an increased risk of heart disease or type 2 diabetes. Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society, has published the study's findings online (NAMS).

Hormone therapy discussions and the related arguments prevail globally for quite some time now. Regardless of the fact that some controlled trials have associated HT to an increased risk of heart disease, current guidelines suggest that hormone therapy is safe for appropriate patients who have been reviewed for baseline diseases, age, and initiation timing.

Many of the older studies had a challenge in that they included older menopausal women who had been menopausal for a long time and had underlying cardiovascular risk factors. Type 2 diabetes was not a primary outcome in most of these studies. They also didn't consider factors like age, time since menopause, pre-existing pathology, and ethnicity.

The link between hormone therapyand the heart disease as well as the type 2 diabetes in 58000postmenopausal women of the middle age group, were studied, by a team, to present the data in the National Health Insurance database in Korea. The findings reveal that hormonal therapy, HT has no significant link to heart disease or type 2 diabetes. Such findings could go a long way toward assuaging concerns about hormone therapy for middle-aged postmenopausal women.

Study results are published in the article “Effects of menopausal hormone therapy on cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes in middle-aged postmenopausal women: analysis of the Korea National Health Insurance Service Database.”

“These results are consistent with our current understanding of the risks and benefits of hormone therapy, with the benefits typically outweighing the risks for women who initiate hormone therapy aged younger than 60 years and within 10 years of menopause onset,” says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director.

Source-Medindia