More bad press for combined HRT

I expect you heard the latest hormone replacement therapy news last week: A UK study of more than one million women concluded that combined HRT (estrogen and progestin) may increase the risk of breast cancer by 22 percent.

And as if that weren’t frightening enough to scare every woman off HRT forever, the lead author of the Lancet report – Professor Valerie Beral, Director of the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University – estimated that the use of combined estrogen and progestin by women aged 50-64 accounted for 15,000 cases of breast cancer in the UK over the past decade.

HRT has taken hit after hit in the year since the Women’s Health Initiative shut down a multi-year HRT study last summer when researchers feared that continuing it would place subjects at risk of ovarian cancer and coronary heart disease.

According to NutraIngredients (a health and nutrition news outlet), a year of bad press about HRT has significantly lifted worldwide sales of supplements and herbal extracts (such as black cohosh and red clover) used by women to help cope with menopausal symptoms.

Someday combined HRT will be universally regarded as a ludicrous therapy choice. But in the meantime, nothing is doing more to boost herbal sales than the mainstream research on this cash-cow, killer drug.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute

Sources:

“HRT Increases Breast Cancer Risk” Associated Press, 8/8/03, msnbc.com

“New Findings Raise HRT Risks” NutraIngredients, 8/8/03, nutraingredients.com