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Friday, April 16, 2004The benefits and risks of long-term estrogen therapy are about equal, says a study out Wednesday. "It's not a terribly harmful drug," says Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center's Garnet Anderson, chair of the group that wrote up the findings. "It also doesn't do much work in terms of prevention." ...After seven years on average, estrogen raised stroke risk 39% and lowered hip fracture risk 39%. Estrogen didn't affect heart disease risk, the main question the study set out to answer. There were fewer heart disease cases in the estrogen group, but there weren't enough cases overall to prove that wasn't because of chance. Unexpectedly, women taking estrogen were 23% less likely to be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. There weren't enough cases to rule out chance as the explanation, but the researchers say that a possible reduction in breast cancer risk needs to be investigated further. All other studies have found that taking estrogen raises breast cancer risk, Anderson says. That's the problem with result inflation. Another study is sure to come along and contradict it. In truth, all the other studies found very small differences (less than one percent) in the incidence of breast cancer among hormone users and non-users. And as far as stroke risk goes, the currrent study didn't find much of a difference between the two groups, either. There were 5,310 women in the study who took estrogen and 5,429 who took placebo. 158 of the estrogen users had strokes during the study, for an incidence of 3%. 118 of the placebo users had strokes, for an incidence of 2%. That isn't all that great a difference. Certainly not enough of a difference to force women to suffer hot flashes rather than seek relief by using estrogen. posted by Sydney on 4/16/2004 08:52:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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