|
| Hormone Medication |  |
April, 2004
Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)
The current status of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in this country is in a state
of flux. The Women’s Health Initiative Study showed that Premarin, Provera, and
their combination (Prempro) were a bad and overly simplistic idea. This was
evident years ago, but they were used for the study anyway. Given the study
results, the FDA should have followed through and removed all three from the
market. Why they did not is a mystery. Liability lawyers, always eager to cash in
on a possible new area of lawsuits, may inadvertently accomplish what the FDA
didn’t. The pharmaceutical companies who manufacture these drugs will have to
discontinue making them because of the legal fees that will be required to defend
themselves in the thousands of lawsuits being filed against them.
Meanwhile almost half of the women who panicked and stopped taking hormones
because the media made all HRT sound dangerous have resumed using hormone
replacement in alternative more effective and safer ways, and are periodically
monitoring blood hormone levels.
|
The good options for hormone therapy are growing, all being non-oral.
|
Another study being done in Great Britain called the Million Women Study is
producing some of the answers we all hoped the Women’s Health Initiative would
produce. Because of the huge number of women being studied, results concerning
cardiovascular effects, bone fractures due to osteoporosis, colon cancer
protection, and breast cancer incidence will be very meaningful. If they turn out to
verify the results obtained in a preliminary study done on my patients several
years ago by an independent investigator, Dr. Gerald Friede, and described
elsewhere on my website, doctors and patients will finally be reassured that HRT,
when it is done correctly, is what it had been hoped to be.
The good options for hormone therapy are growing, all being non-oral.
Skin patches and vaginal rings containing "estradiol" are commercially available
now. Estradiol creams and gels can be made by compounding pharmacists to any
specification, and subcutaneous estradiol pellets and testosterone pellets by certain
compounding pharmacies, as well as progesterone creams. Birth control patches
will almost certainly replace birth control pills. The doubling or tripling of a blood
test result called C Reactive protein is associated with an increased rate of
cardiovascular disease ( the correlation is stronger even than with LDL cholesterol
and heart disease) will push all types of oral hormones off the market.
 |
| |
