Information on Hormone Replacement Therapy

Doctors have been telling women for decades that hormone replacement therapy can restore youth by keeping the skin supple, boosting old and brittle bones, possibly fighting off senile dementia, and reducing the risks of heart disease. Cynthia Pearson, the executive director of the National Women's Health Network, has been offended and skeptical of the claims of everything hormone replacement therapy has been advertised to do from the start. Not only did she find the message of hormone replacement therapy sexist and ageist by delivering the message "Stay young. Stay healthy. Stay sexually vital. Be less of a pain to your husband", but she was appalled at Wyeth's inability to have any real data supporting their claims that Premarin hormone replacement therapy protects against heart disease.

The study ending after five years found, in fact, that just the opposite was true. For years it was believed heart disease, the number one killer in women, could be better prevented using hormone replacement therapy, but the study showed new information that hormone replacement therapy does not just fail to prevent heart disease, but increases the risk of it. The speaker of the congress for the American Academy of Family Physicians, Dr. Michael finds that "The study results will have a tremendous effect . . . they overturn something we've been preaching as 'preventive' for all these years. All women need to be reevaluated and counseled."

New information on hormone replacement therapy drugs, estrogen and progestin, have also been shown to not defy age as was previously thought. The hormone replacement therapy study, described by the executive director of the North American Menopause Society Dr. Wulf Utian as "the biggest bombshell that ever hit in my 30-something years in the menopause area", has provided skeptics with concrete facts showing the dangers of hormone replacement therapy. For years, debate over long-term benefits and risks of hormone replacement therapy has continued. Now, according to the founder of the International Organization to Reclaim Menopause Vicki Meyer, "we need to accept menopause as a natural, normal, physiological process."

There were more than 16,000 healthy American women that enrolled in the estrogen / progestin study between the ages 50-79. Half of the women were randomly assigned for hormone replacement therapy, and the other half were given a placebo. Both the women and their doctors had no idea which pill they were on. This hormone replacement therapy study was the most rigorous type of investigation that is known to conduct, called a double-bind, randomized, and controlled trial. The results are certain, and the plan was for the study to last eight years and to record information including how many suffered from heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, hip fractures, or colon cancer in that time.

There was a safety board to monitor the data in order to ensure the study be stopped prior to 2005 if evidence showed the risks of hormone replacement therapy obviously outweighed the benefits. In late 1999, the monitoring board had seen an unexpected increase in risk of blood clots and heart attacks in the group of women taking hormone replacement therapy. The results were shocking because most doctors were under the impression that hormone replacement therapy protected against cardiovascular disease. While this evidence became available, the study continued based on the reasoning that cardiovascular benefits may take longer to appear. By spring 2002, the likelihood of heart attacks and blood clots in the lungs and legs were present, but also an increased risk of breast cancer surfaced. It was after that finding that the study was then terminated.

Hormone replacement therapy first became popular forty years ago when Robert Wilson thought estrogen served as an all-purpose rejuvenator for women that had reached a certain age. From the start menopause was described as "living decay" by Wilson, and while the view on women has changed over the years to a lesser sexist and ageist standard, the idea that these hormone pills can reverse the signs of aging was so appealing that the number one manufacturer of hormone replacement therapy drug Prempro was able to aggressively market the pill. Now the number one selling hormone replacement therapy pill, Prempro and related product Premphase generated more than $2 billion in sales last year, and another estrogen replacement therapy Premarin sales were $1.3 billion last year. Wyeth is now taking measures to seek legal experts to defend their company in the high number of lawsuits expected to emerge from the news on their estrogen/progestin pill Prempro that accounts for 15% of their revenue.



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