Word: estrogenic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...study is not, however, a free pass for estrogen therapy in all post-menopausal women. "These findings provide reassurance to recently menopausal women who are considering estrogen therapy for treatment of menopausal symptoms, that estrogen is not likely to have an adverse effect on the heart," says Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital and an author of the study. "But it does not mean that women should begin taking estrogen for the express purpose of preventing cardiovascular events because there are other risks of hormone therapy...
...hormone therapy may be worth the slightly increased risk of these conditions, provided that they don't stay on the hormones for more than five years or so. Last April, another study from the WHI supported just this sort of judicious use. That study found that women who began estrogen and progestin, the most commonly prescribed combination (progestinis added to protect against uterine cancer; women with hysterectomies do not need progestin, since they have had their uterus removed), within 10 years of hitting menopause experienced less heart disease than their counterparts who began years after the Change...
...reason for that, researchers speculate, could be related to two things. One, it could simply reflect the aging of the arteries; younger women are more likely to have flexible, pliable arteries that respond to estrogen, which tends to discourage plaque formation. Older arteries, on the other hand, are more likely to be stiffer, and already burdened with fatty deposits and plaques; in the presence of these plaques, it turns out, estrogen may even have the reverse effect, causing them to destabilize and rupture, leading to blocked-up arteries and a heart attack...
...some doctors believe, there may be a window of opportunity where hormone therapy should be started. The whole idea behind estrogen and progestin therapy after menopause is for the supplemental hormones to replace the estrogen that the woman's body is no longer making. If hormone therapy starts while the naturally circulating estrogen is still around, some doctors think that the hormones will continue to exert beneficial effects on the heart. The latest study seems to support this idea...
...Still, even if estrogen is linked to less plaque in the arteries, that doesn't mean it outweighs other possible risks of hormone therapy. "People want a simple answer to whether estrogen is bad or good," says Marcia Stefanick, another author of the paper, from Stanford University. "but it's not that simple. We need to ask instead, 'Is it bad or good for what...