Hormone Replacement Therapy Linked to Blood Clots
American researchers report more risks for older women who take the hormone
replacement drugs estrogen and progestin. The researchers found that some
women who take the hormones are at sharply higher risk for developing blockages
in blood vessels in the legs and lungs.
Hormone replacement drugs are designed to help ease problems among older
women during menopause. This is when a woman’s body produces less of the
hormones estrogen and progesterone. Lower hormone levels in menopause cause
some women to feel hot, experience mood changes, and suffer bone loss. To help
with these problems, some women have been taking estrogen or estrogen with
progestin.
Earlier studies had suggested an increased risk of blood clots among women who
took the hormones. But researchers did not know until now that some groups of
women are at even greater risk.
Researchers studied sixteen thousand women between the ages of fifty and
seventy-nine years old. They found that the risk of blood clots for women who had
taken the hormones was two times higher than for those who had not. The
research showed that women over the age of seventy who took the hormones had
more than seven times the risk. And the researchers found that being overweight
also raises the danger of a blood clot among women who took the hormones.
Normally, taking aspirin reduces the risk of blood clots by thinning the blood. But
researchers found that aspirin did not help the women who were also taking the
hormones.
The latest findings come from a fifteen-year government study called the Women’s
Health Initiative.
For many years, health experts thought that the hormone drugs could help prevent
heart disease, cancer and possibly mental illness in women. But many women
stopped taking the drugs two years ago after a government study found that the
hormones raised the risk of heart disease and some cancers.
Experts say taking estrogen and progestin does reduce the risk of the bone loss
disease, osteoporosis. The drugs have also been shown to lower the risk for colon
cancer. However, American health officials advise women to take the smallest
amount of hormones needed for the shortest possible time.