Women Going off Menopause Hormones
Reported September 18, 2007
SAN ANTONIO The news that a big drop in breast cancer cases might be due to millions of women going off menopause hormones may lead even more of them to dump the pills.
But doctors concern that women with strict menopausal symptoms will overreact to the risks and refuse themselves the benefits of hormones.
“There are some women who really require treatment. … I worry that they will be talked out of it,” said Dr. JoAnn Manson, a women’s health expert at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Hormone use plummeted following a 2002 study found that it raised the risk of breast cancer, heart disease and other troubles. Before that, the pills were thought to avoid many of those conditions, and doctors prescribed them as little fountains of youth.
Researchers reported that the rate of breast cancer in the United States dropped over 7 percent in 2003, the year following that landmark study. The reaction against hormones is measured the leading details for the decline.
Some women are still with hormone therapy “because their doctors genuinely believe that it prevents some diseases,” said Dr. Isaac Schiff of Massachusetts General Hospital, who headed a panel for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that recommended in 2004 that doctors not refuse to give the treatment from women who really need it.
But that’s not as many women as you might think, Manson said.
About 2 million women begin menopause each year in the United States, but only about one-fourth have moderate to severe symptoms lasting longer than four years, said Manson, whose new book, “Hot Flashes, Hormones & Your Health,” includes a flowchart to help women make a decision whether to use hormones, which type and for how long.
