HRT increases stroke risk

Findings from the Nurses' Health Study indicate that women taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are at an increased risk of stroke, no matter when they begin treatment. The researchers evaluated the stroke risk associated with HRT in 121,700 women participating in the Nurses' Health Study from 1976 to 2004. Compared to women who had never used hormones, women currently HRT had an increased risk for stroke (39% for those taking oestrogen and 27% for those taking oestrogen with progestin). "This increased risk was observed for women initiating hormone therapy at young ages or near menopause and at older ages or more than 10 years after menopause," the researchers said in their paper published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. However, women taking HRT for less than five years at younger ages did not have a clear increase of stroke, which might be due to the small number of cases studied, the researchers said. "The incidence of stroke was relatively low in younger women, and the attributable risk in women aged 50 through 54 years indicated approximately an additional two cases of stroke per 10,000 women per year taking hormones," they added. "In summary, our findings indicate that hormone therapy is associated with an increased risk of stroke, regardless of the hormone regime or the timing of hormone therapy initiation," the researchers concluded. "However, in younger women, who are at lower absolute risk of stroke, the attributable risk of stroke owing to hormone use is modest, and our data suggest that risk might be further minimized by lower doses and shorter duration of treatment." Commenting in an interview with the Australian, Professor Susan Davis from Melbourne’s AlfredHospital and head of women’s health at MonashUniversity said that while the numbers sound alarming the risk to individual women was “minuscule”. She said the most significant finding reported by the group was the link between the dose of HRT women took and their risk of stroke - the higher the dose the higher the risk....