HRT Cuts Cardiac Risk in Women Under 60

On the heels of news that hormone-replacement therapy may not raise breast-cancer risk comes news that it may help the heart.

Researchers at Cornell and Stanford universities said Thursday that an analysis of several major studies showed that HRT may actually reduce the risk of heart attack by about one-third in women under the age of 60. However, results of the analysis were not as promising for women over the age of 60.

A statistical analysis of 23 clinical trials with more than 39,000 women found that when women started HRT (estrogen with or without progesterone) in their 50s to relieve such menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, their risk of heart attack or cardiac death dropped by 32 percent, compared with those receiving a placebo or no treatment.

But for women over the age of 60, HRT increased the risk of heart attacks in the first year of treatment, but after two years of treatment HRT began to reduce heart attacks compared with women taking a placebo.

We pooled the data from the two (Women’s Health Initiative) trials for younger women with all other randomized placebo-controlled trials and found a statistically significant 32 percent reduction in coronary heart disease events for women who start treatment in their 50s, said Shelley Salpeter, a clinical professor of medicine at Stanford’s School of Medicine and a physician at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Calif.

The findings are published in the April issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.