Hormone replacement therapy again

BMJ 1998;316:1842-1844 ( 20 June )

Editorials

Hormone replacement therapy again

Risk-benefit relation differs between populations and individuals

Papers p 1858

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Hormone replacement therapy is increasingly advocated not just for short term treatment of menopausal symptoms but as longterm prophylactic therapy against heart disease, osteoporosis, even Alzheimer's disease $---$ indeed, as the solution to many of the problems of ageing women.¹ Should universal hormone replacementtherapy be recommended in asymptomatic healthy postmenopausalwomen?

Many clinicians now take it as established that postmenopausal hormone therapy protects against coronary heart disease inwomen. However, this is not based on data from randomised trialswith coronary end points. Hemminki and McPherson attempted tosee whether useful information on the incidence of cardiovasculardiseases and cancer could be obtained from published clinicaltrials which studied other outcomes of postmenopausal hormonetherapy.² Despite pooling data from all the small trials theyfound no convincing evidence one way or the other. Most strikingis the tiny size and short duration of most of the trials, whichclearly . . . [Full text of this article]

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Hormone replacement therapy and risk of hip fracture: population based case-control study: Karl Michaëlsson, John A Baron, Bahman Y Farahmand, Olof Johnell, Cecilia Magnusson, Per-Gunnar Persson, Ingemar Persson, and Sverker Ljunghall
BMJ 1998 316: 1858-1863. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

Hemminki, E. (2000). Hormone replacement therapy: discrepancies between evidence and recommendations. Scand J Public Health 28: 81-83 [Abstract]

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