United States: HRT study flawed?

Off Our Backs, Jul/Aug 2004 by Christian, Sena, Stachowski, Roxanne, Ferden, Sara, Walter, Shoshana

According to researchers at Yale University, the 2002 Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) study-conducted by the Women's Health Initiative (WHI)-may have been seriously flawed. The Women's Health Initiative said that the study showed a link between HRT and an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes among women. Although the study involved 15,000 women, Yale scientists say the study was not big enough to make any realistic conclusions. The scientists also claim that the study had design flaws.

In the 1990s, the FDA approved the marketing of estrogen and hormone replacement therapy to healthy women as a way to prevent heart disease. However, according to Cindy Pearson, executive director of the National Women's Health Network, no controlled experiment was ever completed to prove the claim. According to Doctor Frederick Naftolin of Yale, however, previous research has been done aimed at women in their late 40s and early 50s that shows that HRT helps prevent heart attacks and strokes, while the WHI study looked at women over 60. he said that previous research had shown that HRT was fairly useless if the woman had the treatment a long time after menopause-as would be the case with all women over 60 in the WHI study.

-info from www.medicalnewstoday.com