Lawtitudes Blog

In a rather unexpected twist, researchers have found that women over age 60, who are still suffering from menopausal symptoms including hot flashes and night sweats are at higher risk for heart attacks without hormones– while their risks for cardiac events with hormones is even higher.

The study published in the April 4, 2007 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is actually a new analysis of findings initially reported in the Women’s Health Initiative which included over 27,000 women between the ages of 50 and 79. As it now turns out, women in their 50’s who take hormones for these quality of life concerns, are a bit “safer” then their older counterparts: they still run the risk of strokes and breast cancer– but at least not heart attacks.

Women are once again cautioned that they can not take these preparations with impunity and certainly only for the shortest period of time to ensure– or at least to provide– a modicum of safety. So what’s the big deal?

Since the findings were first reported in the Women’s Health Initiative– which was sponsored by our National Institutes of Health (and which was intended to prove that hormones actually provided coronary benefits to women taking these drugs for menopausal symptoms), we have learned that all women, regardless of their age, are at a higher risk of stroke and breast cancer. This has in turn spawned thousands of cases around the country on behalf of women who have indeed suffered otherwise preventable breast cancers as a result of taking hormones such as Prempro for long periods of time. Initially the medical community, encouraged by big pharma’s sales force tactics and through the industry’s aggressive advertising campaigns aimed at doctors and patients alike, keenly advocated long term hormone use under the mistaken impression that these drugs would provide cardio protective benefits and reduce the risk of heart disease, as well as delay or inhibit the onset of dementia, and thwart the development and progresssion of osteoporosis. In fact, only the latter (osteoporosis prevention) claim was accurate. In the meantime, many women suffering from menopausal symtoms, and many others who simply took the drug for these false benefits, suffered breast cancer, heart attacks and strokes as a result of hormone use.

Many women– in droves–abandoned their hormone drugs after learning of the risks. Some, quite reluctantly, due to the relief of menopausal syptmoms which the drugs provided. And since that time, the use of hormonal agents for the “treatment” of menopausal symptoms. has been a source of tremendous conflict within the scientific and medical communities.

This recent JAMA study is alarming– if only for the way in which its findings are being reported. NAMS (The North American Medical Society), put a diferent spin on the article concluding that “these findings should help reassure younger women who are considering use of Hormone Therapy for appropriate indications that such use does not include an increased risk of cornoary vascular disease”. But the risks of stroke and breast cancer remain– and the admonitions against long term use even for these women, is a given.

At the center of this is the drug Prempro- a synthetic combined hormonal prepartion , the estrogenic portion of which is generated through the processing of horse urine from impregnated mares, harvested in the most unconscionable and cruel manner imaginable.

The dangers of this particular agent which combined conjugated estrogen with synthetic progestin, underscore the unfortunate use of women as a marketable commodity. Consider that millions of women in this country alone are of menopausal age. Marketing menopause, then, as a “disease” to this huge population through direct-to-consumer advertising, and convincing the medical profession that these agents are actually beneficial to the health of women of a certain age, is a marketer’s dream come true.

This is not to say that certain women won’t benefit from hormones, but this is a quality of life decision, not a marketing game.

Central to the claims now being pursued around the country are the industry’s once aggressive and convincing but unproven and misleading claims that hormone replacement therapy was to be taken for years as a life prolonging and age retarding prepartion. Today of course in the wake of all that has happened as a result of and since the WH1 studies, the industry no longer promotes this view.

But in the end, it is still a choice for the woman and her physician– except now, the choice is made weighing the negatives: diminshed quality of life against enhanced risk of use. It sems to this observer, that perhaps it is time to find a proven safe method of releif rather than promoting ultimately hazardous agents for a shorter duration of use.