HEALTH REPORT-July 24, 2002: Hormone Replacement Therapy Study Halted
By Nancy Steinbach
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
American government researchers have halted a national women’s health study
because they found harmful effects from hormone replacement therapy, or H-R-T.
Women’s bodies stop producing the hormone estrogen at about the age of fifty.
This period of life is called menopause. Until now, medical experts believed that
taking the hormone estrogen could protect older women from health problems like
heart disease. Recent studies have disagreed, however.
The latest study is the largest ever done to investigate the effects of H-R-T on
healthy, older women. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health carried out the study. It involved more
than sixteen-thousand women between the ages of fifty and seventy-nine. Half of the women took a pill that
contains the hormones estrogen and progestin. The other women took an inactive substance.
After five years, the women who took the hormones were twenty-six percent more likely to develop breast cancer
than the others. The study found that the hormones also increased the chances of heart attacks by twenty-nine
percent and strokes by forty-one percent. The researchers did find that the treatment reduced the number of
broken bones and colon cancers. But officials decided to stop the study three years early because they believed
the hormones did more harm than good.
The study tested the hormone progestin mixed with a kind of estrogen. About six -million American women use
this kind of hormone replacement therapy. Adding progestin to the estrogen is necessary to prevent the risk of
cancer of the uterus. A similar combination is used in Europe.
The study results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Some experts said women
should use the hormones only to ease severe problems during menopause, such as feelings of extreme heat. They
said women should not take hormone replacement therapy for more than a few years. They said women should
protect their hearts and bones with other drugs and exercise.
The researchers said more testing is needed to see if other kinds of H-R-T have similar effects. For example, they
said it may be safer to use smaller amounts of estrogen and progestin that can be placed on the skin.
This VOA Special English Health Report was written by Nancy Steinbach.
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