Women seeking relief for menopause symptoms may have suffered a setback after a US study found that taking soy supplements may not help ease menopause symptoms or prevent the bone changes that start at that time of life.
Women have been without a clear go-to treatment for menopause since the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study of hormone therapy reported heart and cancer risks with estrogen and progestin use — risks that soy supplements did not have.
But the most recent study, reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that women who took soy supplements every day for two years did not have any improvement in their symptoms compared to those who took a soy-free placebo pill — and they suffered more hot flashes by the end of the study.
Photo: Lin Hsiang-mei, Liberty Times
照片：自由時報記者林相美
“What prompted us to do this study was in the wake of WHI when many of our patients stopped using hormone therapy,” said Silvina Levis, the study’s lead author who is from the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami.
Levis and her team randomly split 248 women who had recently hit menopause into two groups. For two years, half of the women took 200mg of soy isoflavones every day — about twice the amount of a soy-rich diet. The other half took placebo pills.
None of the participants, most of whom were Hispanic, knew whether they were getting the real or the sham treatment. About 182 completed the study.
At their two-year visit, women in both groups had lost the same amount of bone density in their spine and hip since starting the study.
They also reported a similar number of menopause symptoms, except that more women in the soy group said they had hot flashes — 48 percent, compared to 32 percent in the placebo group.
(REUTERS)
受更年期症狀所苦的女性可能要失望了，美國研究發現，服用大豆補充劑可能無助緩解更年期症狀，也無法預防自更年期開始骨質密度的改變。
自從婦女健康倡議（WHI）針對荷爾蒙療法研究指出，使用雌性激素與黃體素可能引發心臟病及癌症風險，而大豆補充劑則無此顧慮之後，女性就沒有一個明確緩解更年期症狀所能遵循的治療方法。
刊登在《內科醫學檔案》的最新研究發現，相較於服用無大豆製品的安慰劑者，每天攝取大豆補充劑長達兩年的婦女，在研究結束後，不僅更年期症狀未獲改善，受潮熱不適比例還更高。
研究的主要作者希爾維娜‧李維斯說：「我們做此研究的動機，是有鑑於WHI公布研究後，我們有許多患者不再接受荷爾蒙療法，直接到健康食品店購買大豆補充劑。」李維斯來自邁阿密大學米勒醫學院。
李維斯與其研究團隊在兩百四十八名剛進入更年期的女性中，隨機分為兩組。兩年的持續性研究，一半女性每天服用兩百毫克大豆異黃酮─此劑量大約是富含大豆飲食的兩倍；而另外一半則是服用安慰劑。
這群以西班牙裔居多的受試者，沒有一位知道她們得到的是真的治療還是假的。大約一百八十二位全程參與研究。
兩年研究發現，兩組女性脊椎與臀部骨質密度流失量，自研究開始以來都相同。
此外，兩組婦女更年期症狀（統計）數據類似，唯一不同的是，服用大豆補充劑組的女性，有百分之四十八感到潮熱不適，而服用安慰劑組的婦女則只有百分之三十二。
（路透／翻譯：林亞蒂）
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