Dramatic Drop in Hormone Therapy Use
Results of Clinical Trial Convince Many Women to Abandon Hormone Therapy After Menopause
Jan. 6, 2004 -- New research confirms that millions of women in the U.S. have abandoned menopausal hormone therapy, but other recent studies suggest that many are having a difficult time coping without it.
Stanford University researchers report that prescriptions for the estrogen-plus-progestin drug Prempro declined by two-thirds in the year following the early termination of a large prevention trial linking Prempro's use in postmenopausal women to an increased risk of heart attacks, blood clots, and breast cancer.
Roughly 2 1/2 million women in the U.S. still take estrogen-plus-progestin combinations like Prempro, compared with 6 million who took the hormone therapy before July of 2002, says lead investigator Randall S. Stafford, MD, PhD, of the Stanford Prevention Research Center. That is when government health officials announced plans to halt the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study evaluating the combination treatment for the prevention of heart disease and other diseases associated with aging.
A WHI trial evaluating estrogen therapy alone, which is given to women who have had hysterectomies, is scheduled to end in 2005. But the new findings also show a steep decline in its use. Prescriptions for the estrogen-alone drug Premarin dropped by one-third in the year following the cessation of the Prempro trial.
Backlash
Stafford and colleagues used two national databases to assess trends in menopausal hormone therapy usage between January 1995 and July 2003. Annual prescriptions for these drugs increased from 58 million in 1995 to 90 million in 1999, then remained relatively stable until the WHI trial was stopped in July of 2002. A year later, HRT prescriptions had dropped to roughly 57 million. The findings are reported in the Jan. 7 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Last month, University of California researchers reported that about a quarter of the women in their study who stopped taking menopausal hormone therapy ended up going back on the treatment to relieve hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms. Other studies have also shown that many women who abandoned these medications are going back to it. It is estimated that 10 million women in the U.S. now take either estrogen alone or estrogen plus progestin.