Search

The sudden decision by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to terminate the estrogen-progestogen therapy arm of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Study a decade ago now begs two questions: - has women's health after menopause been helped or harmed as a result of the findings and the way in which they were presented, and, if harmed, what needs to be done to put things right? Time and multiple reviews of specific publications from the WHI lead to the serious question whether a project designed to be of benefit to women's health has boomeranged, and instead may have resulted in significant impairment to both the quality of life and physical health of postmenopausal women. It is therefore urgent to confirm whether this is so and whether corrective action needs be taken to prevent even more harm. There are two obvious and immediate actions to be called for: (1) The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to revisit the black-box warnings on postmenopausal hormones. Specifically, there needs to be a separation of the advisories for estrogen alone from estrogen and progestogen combined usage. (2) Justification is given to call for an independent commission to scrutinize every major WHI paper to determine whether the data justified the conclusions drawn. Women progressing through and beyond menopause in the next decade need to be spared the unnecessary harm that may have been inflicted on their sisters of the previous decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the development of therapy for the symptoms of menopause. Report that many women ceased using hormone replacement therapy when the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) found it to be unsafe; Efforts of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide safe therapies for the symptoms of menopause; Key features of the NIH panel's report, in which characterizes menopause as a normal and healthy phase in women's lives; Attribution of symptoms to either estrogen loss or other causes; Details of treatments recommended by the panel; Reaction of several physicians to the panel's report.

Editorial. Presents an editorial on the use of estrogen in hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women. Report that postmenopausal estrogen treatment causes endometrial cancer; Use of estrogen plus progestin therapies in the United States; Increase of coronary heart disease in women taking estrogen plus progestin therapies; Reference to the halt of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) estrogen plus progestin trial due to an increased risk of coronary events, stroke, breast cancer and pulmonary embolism; Decline in the sale of drugs such as Premarin; Discussion of a medical study found in the April 14, 2004 issue, conducted by the WHI on the effectiveness of estrogen-alone treatments; Absence of evidence proving that estrogen treatments prevent coronary heart disease; Increased risk of stroke; Effect of estrogen-alone treatments with respect to breast cancer; Increased risk of dementia and/or mild cognitive impairment in the estrogen-alone trial; Discussion of clinical implications of the study including the treatment of menopausal symptoms and the prevention of chronic disease.