Postmenopausal hormone therapy and ovarian cancer- again!

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Women with moderate to severe menopause symptoms often consider hormone therapy to help ease them through various problems like hot flashes (flushes), night sweats and sore/tender breasts and nipples amongst others. If you’re considering this, the usual advice is to weigh the advantages and disadvantages before starting HRT (hormone replacement therapy).

New research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that women who are on hormone replacement therapy or have used HRT in the past are more likely to develop ovarian cancer.
Over 900,000 Danish women aged 50-79 years were followed up for 8 years. Women on hormone replacement therapy were found to have a 38 -44% increase in their chances of developing ovarian cancer compared to women who had never used HRT. For women who had come off hormone replacement 2 years earlier, the increased in risk was about 22% compared to women who had never used HRT.

The interesting thing was that after 2-4 years off hormone therapy, the risk for users of HRT dropped drastically and became equal to that of women who had never had any hormone replacement. The duration of hormone therapy and the type of hormone combination taken did not have any impact on the results.
Ovarian cancer is a rare disease but a very deadly one with low survival rates especially if diagnosed late. Because of its rarity, this increase in risk is very small when you consider the number of women that will actually develop the disease in their lifetime.

The fact remains that, like any other health care choices you make, taking hormones after menopause should be a decision you take based on the best information you can get and considering your personal and family health history.

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