Women who want to use hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may be less likely to have a stroke if they use low-dose patches instead of pills, Canadian researchers reported on Thursday.
Their study of British women showed that those who used estrogen patches to control symptoms of menopause did not have any higher risk of stroke than women who did not use HRT.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, adds to a very slowly growing body of evidence that could rehabilitate the use of HRT, which plummeted in 2002 after the publication of the Women’s Health Initiative study, which found an increased risk of ovarian cancer, breast cancer, strokes and other health problems from hormone therapy.
Sales of US market leader Wyeth’s combined estrogen-progestin therapy Prempro have fallen by about 50 percent since 2001 to about US$1 billion a year. Wyeth is now owned by Pfizer.
However, many experts who studied HRT said there was some evidence that if women took a lower dose and if they took HRT by means other than a pill, the risks might not be as high.
Samy Suissa of McGill University in Montreal and colleagues used Britain’s national medical database to pick out 15,700 women over 50 who had strokes and nearly 60,000 who had not.
Women who had used low-dose transdermal patches to get their HRT had almost precisely the same risk of stroke — very slightly less, in fact — than women who used no HRT.
“I think that these are promising findings,” said JoAnn Manson of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who helped lead the Women’s Health Initiative and who was not involved in Suissa’s study.
Suissa’s team found that 7.7 percent of stroke patients had been given a prescription for some form of HRT within the previous year of their stroke. And 6.9 percent of women who did not have a stroke got some form of HRT.
“The risk of stroke was not increased with use of low estrogen dose patches compared with no use, whereas the risk was increased with high dose patches,” Suissa’s team wrote.
HRT pills raised the risk of stroke by 25 percent to 30 percent, regardless of the formulation. High-dose patches raised the risk by 88 percent.
Delivering low doses of hormones through the skin bypasses the liver and may reduce the whole-body effects, Suissa’s team said in their report.
Menopause can cause serious symptoms, including debilitating hot flashes, sleep disturbances and a lack of energy. Women also become more susceptible to heart disease, osteoporosis and some cancers after menopause.
Experts in HRT and menopause say women should be able to choose to use hormones to treat these symptoms, but should take the lowest dose possible for the shortest possible time. Before 2002, HRT was regularly prescribed to prevent heart disease and osteoporosis, but the experts now recommend against this.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese