CHICAGO (Reuters) — Women who took hormone replacement therapy after
menopause had a sharply increased risk of ovarian cancer, researchers in Denmark
are reporting.
In a study of more than 900,000 Danish women ages 50 to 79, the scientists found
140 extra cases of ovarian cancer linked to hormone treatment over eight years.
That translated to a 38 percent greater risk of contracting the disease,
compared with women who did not receive the therapy.
Hormone therapy accounted for 5 percent of the cases of ovarian cancer in the
study period, the researchers reported in The Journal of the American Medical
Association.
“Even though this share seems low, ovarian cancer remains highly fatal, so
accordingly this risk warrants consideration,” wrote the researchers, led by
Lina Steinrud Morch of Copenhagen University.
The findings were similar to those in the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative study,
which was stopped early because it found an increased risk of ovarian cancer,
breast cancer, strokes and other health problems from hormone therapy.
Use of the treatment plunged after those findings were reported, and sales of
Prempro, the combined estrogen-progestin therapy sold by Wyeth, have fallen 50
percent since 2001, to around $1 billion a year.
Wyeth’s director of global medical affairs, Dr. Corrado Altomare, who was not
involved in the Danish study, said that for women considering hormone therapy,
family history and personal medical history “certainly” come into play.
The risks of ovarian cancer were about the same from hormone therapy regardless
of the duration of use, the formulation of the hormones, the estrogen dose or
how it was administered, according to the study.
As in earlier studies, the recent one found that the cancer risk diminished
about two years after therapy was stopped.
Ovarian cancer is diagnosed in roughly 18 out of 100,000 women in the United
States each year, according to government statistics, and it killed 15,000
Americans in 2007.
