Post-menopausal women who have not had a hysterectomy usually get a combination of estrogen and progestin, to counter an increased risk of uterine cancer associated with estrogen alone. Millions of these women got a jolt in January when the Journal published a study that showed some who take both estrogen and progestin may be increasing their risk of breast cancer by 8 percent to 12 percent. If I could poll 100 women who are not on hormone therapy but have been offered it, their main reason would be the fear of breast cancer. But it's not a realistic fear. It's not just about the number of years that you live, but the quality of those years.
Doctors agree the issue deserves more study.
But for now, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has issued a statement recommending that neither doctors nor their patients change therapies because of the report. Doctors say patients and the media often miss the fine print. In last week's report about estrogen and heart disease, researchers told about 25,000 women enrolled in a federal study that hormone replacement therapy may have put them at a slightly higher risk of heart attacks and strokes. But researchers also noted that the number of women in the study who suffered heart attacks was tiny and that the 10-year study was only 2 years old. They cautioned it is early to know if increased risk would hold up.