Hormone Replacement Therapy HRT Osteoporosis Menopause

Ballyhooed by the popular media, pushed by many physicians, promoted by drug companies, HRT is feared by women. "I accept that it will help prevent brittle bones (osteoporosis,) help my heart, and help in certain feminine ways.

But it may give me cancer," they say.

These women may be right.

To paraphrase a group of scientist-researchers at the Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases at the University of Nebraska, Omaha*, (our research in animals shows that estrogen (principal ingredient in HRT) induces breast and pituitary tumors.)

Want more? From Annals of Internal Medicine** by Dr. J. A. Cauley et al, doctors compared 97 women who had developed breast cancer with 244 women who had not. The highest amounts of estrogen were found in the cancer patients.

Finally, An analysis of the users of HRT found that 90% of the clinical studies showed an increased risk of breast cancer, according to the authoritative British medical journal Lancet, October 11, l998 issue.

And other reports show an increased risk for endometrial cancer.

What to do about it? Future Health Bulletins will reveal the foods that may replace HRT.

*Appeared in Journal of Nutrition, vol.129, l999. Drs. Spady, Harvell, Lemus-Wilson, Strecker, Pennington, Vander Woude, Birt, McComb & Shell. Dr. Birt is now at Iowa State U., Ames, Dept. of Food Sciences & Nutrition.
**Feb. 16, l999.

DETAILS: For those who like to delve deeper, here's more on the Lancet report.

It was a study analyzing data on 161,000 women in 21 countries. The scientists were part of many, many institutions, including the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute, Johns Hopkins U., Karolinska U. in Stockholm, ad infinitem, and was intended to determine exactly how HRT (also called Estrogen Replacement Therapy, ERT) affected the women who took it. As they stated, "The longer the duration of use, and, to a lesser extent, the older women are when they use HRT, the larger the cumulative excess numbers of cancers diagnosed." Since these findings of October 17, l997, newspapers have reported on HRT's beneficial effects on heart disease and osteoporosis, yet without mentioning the "minor" downside of increased cancer risk.

An example of this appeared in the New York Times of August 18, l998, which reported doubts that HRT's heart effects even benefit women who already have heart disease. The article states that "It is too soon to say whether (the risk of cancer with these pills)...outweigh the benefits."

MORE DETAILS: In contrast to the push for Hormone Replacement Therapy by the drug industry, aided by an unquestioning media, another report in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) * revealed that "...three recent studies reported a higher risk of (blood clots) in postmenopausal women receiving (HRT) than in non-users of estrogen." In effect, they indicated that though some women may benefit, others may experience dire consequences.

SHOCKING: The continued and increased use of HRT was not affected by damning reports back in l992** and in 1994, l995 and in l996 by authoritative medical journals.

*By Drs. Koh, Mincenmoyer, Cannon et al., Cardiology Branch & Office of Biostatistics, Natl. Heart, Lung & Blood Inst., & Dept. of Clinical Pathology & Pharmacology, N.I.H., in NEJM, vol. 36, #10, l997.
**Journals included Thromb. Hoest., Circulation, & Lancet.