HRT doesn’t raise the risk of early death

WOMEN taking hormone replacement therapy to cope with the menopause are not at a higher risk of early death, said a major study last night.

The longest study conducted into HRT found no difference in mortality between women who took the pills and those who did not.

Experts said the findings provide ‘substantial reassurance’ after years of scares about the risks of HRT.

The menopause, which typically occurs when a woman is in her early 50s, can cause depression, hot flushes, headaches and night sweats.

HRT helps by providing oestrogen as the body stops producing it. But the number taking it plummeted after studies in the early 2000s led to fears it raised the risk of breast, womb and ovarian cancer.

In the latest study at Harvard Medical School, 27,347 women were tracked for two decades. The authors found taking HRT resulted in no additional risk of death from any cause or specifically cancer or heart disease.

On cancer, they found that women were more likely to get breast cancer with certain forms of HRT but this did not translate into extra deaths.

‘It’s the ultimate bottom line,’ said lead author Dr JoAnn Manson, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, US.

‘Women want to know “is this medication going to kill me” and the answer appears to be no.’ The researchers tracked the women, aged 50 to 79, for 18 years after they had taken HRT for five to seven years. Women who were older when they started taking the drug were the most at risk, reported the JAMA medical journal. But even among the oldest, the additional chance of early death was statistically insignificant compared with those who did not take the drug.

Overall, almost 7,500 women died, about 27 per cent each in the hormone and dummy pill groups. Most deaths occurred after stopping the treatment. About 9 per cent in both groups died from heart disease and about 8 per cent from cancer.

In an editorial in the journal, Dr Melissa McNeil, of the University of Pittsburgh, said the study ‘provides substantial reassurance for patients and physicians’.

The number of British women on HRT has halved to one million in the past 20 years. NHS watchdog NICE issued guidance in 2015 advising GPs to offer the drug to more women.

But Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive at Breast Cancer Now, urged caution. ‘To minimise the risk of breast cancer during treatment, it is recommended the lowest effective dose is used for the shortest possible time,’ she said.

Dr Jasmine Just, Cancer Research UK’s health information officer, said: ‘HRT increases the risk of getting several types of cancer. But this does suggest women using HRT aren’t more likely to die from cancer than women who don’t use HRT.

‘ This could be down to improvements in treatment, which means more women are surviving, regardless of whether they’ve used HRT or not. Or it could be women taking HRT are more aware of their increased risk and are more likely to be diagnosed early.’

‘Substantial reassurance’