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As many of you know, I don't accept all the dangers being linked to estrogen therapy. (As someone recently said, "Estrogen's no more dangerous than being a woman.")
Here is an article I totally agree with which begins to question the validity of the WHI study.
Hormone study results raise more questions
November 23, 2002
November 23, 2002
If you thought this summer's damning news about hormone-replacement therapy was bad, hang on to your Midol, ladies. It gets worse. Titans in the medical world are clashing. Respected docs are raising disturbing questions about the methodology, politics and conclusions of the Women's Health Initiative, a long-term trial involving 16,600 postmenopausal women.
To refresh your memory: In July, one portion of a $600 million WHI study was abruptly halted because researchers felt there was too much danger to the women in the study to continue it. Five years into the eight-year study, researchers found that women in the trial taking HRT had a higher incidence of heart attack, stroke, breast cancer and blood clots than the control group taking placebos.
But now, some medical experts are questioning the massive WHI study. Dr. Leon Speroff, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, for example, suggests WHI picked the wrong group of women to study. Therefore, he says, the results are alarmist and misleading. The 16,600 female subjects were POST-menopausal. The study measured the effects of HRT on women who already could be expected to have the beginnings of heart disease and cancer, in other words.
This is how Speroff stated it in a paper he distributed to colleagues:
"Women with significant menopausal symptoms were excluded from the study to avoid an exceedingly high dropout rate in the placebo group. For this reason, less than 10 percent of the subjects were close to their age of menopause (the number is probably even smaller.) Therefore, the study was not a primary prevention study of cardiovascular disease, but a study of older women who undoubtedly already had a significant degree of atherosclerosis."
The elephant in the living room - the question the study failed to address - is this: Will HRT begun at or near the time of menopause protect women against heart disease? Speroff maintains we shouldn't read too much into the highly publicized WHI study. "The impression that this is the gold standard is incorrect."
And so, dear HRT-concerned readers, thanks for staying with me, and once again I must end on this wholly unsatisfying note: Stand by. We'll keep you posted. Click here for complete article
2002 © The E.W. Scripps Co
The above is not meant to be medical advice. Please read the attached Disclaimer, Etc.
Best wishes. Dr. Rehert
The above is not meant to be medical advice. Please read the attached Disclaimer, Etc.
Best wishes. Dr. Rehert
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