Older women should avoid hormone therapy: study

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Women long past menopause should not use hormones to prevent heart disease, researchers said on Wednesday.

But mounting evidence suggests hormone therapy may be useful for women early in menopause looking for short-term relief from hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms, another researcher said.

The international study on older women, published in the British Medical Journal, confirms recent findings that suggest hormone replacement therapy or HRT poses risks for women in their 60s just starting to take it.

"For long-term prevention of chronic diseases, hormone therapy would really not be advisable," said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of the division of preventive medicine at Harvard Medical School's Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston.

Manson, who was not involved in the British Medical Journal study, spoke separately at a news briefing on the latest thinking about hormone replacement therapy.

For many years, doctors had thought hormone therapy could protect women from chronic diseases and especially from heart disease.

But a 2002 study called the Women's Health Initiative or WHI raised alarms about heart attack and stroke risks associated with the therapy, leading millions of women to abandon HRT.

Now growing evidence suggests these risks are most pronounced for women who start taking hormones later.