- CHICAGO (Reuters) - A federal
study confirmed that women taking hormone replacement therapy are more
likely to get breast cancer, though the risk plummets after halting treatment,
the National Institutes of Health said on Friday.
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- "It's not a lifetime of risk they are getting"
with this treatment, said Robert Spirtas, a contraception and reproductive
health specialist at the NIH and senior author of the study.
-
- Thousands of women taking so-called HRT treatment were
advised to stop in July after a separate federal human trial found the
most popular form of HRT -- Wyeth's PremPro -- raises the risk of cancer.
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- Spirtas' NIH study of about 3800 post-menopausal women
reported Friday found that women taking PremPro or equivalent drugs --
a mix of the hormones estrogen and progestin -- were 1.54 times more likely
to get breast cancer than their counterparts not on the treatment.
-
- Yet the risk begins to drop to normal just six months
after stopping combined hormone treatment, according to study results published
in the December 2002 issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
-
- The NIH studied post-menopausal women on hormone replacement
therapy for five years or more.
-
- Some women only take the therapy for several months when
they have severe symptoms like hot flashes and vaginal dryness, while others
have been on it for 15 to 20 years, Spirtas said.
-
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has strengthened
warnings on Wyeth's PremPro and Premarin, which uses only estrogen.
-
- Wyeth has said prescriptions for PremPro have fallen
40 percent, and those for Premarin have slumped 15 percent since news of
those studies emerged.
-
- Doctors still disagree on whether combined HRT, taken
by an estimate 6 million U.S. women, is too risky to be widely prescribed.
-
- With reporting by Maggie Fox
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