Word: prempro
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...many ways, the story began four years ago when researchers halted a different part of the WHI--one that looked at the long-term health effects of taking the hormone combination estrogen and progestin (Prempro)--because of an increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease. (Women with a uterus who want to try hormone therapy must take both hormones because estrogen alone increases the risk of uterine cancer.) Two years later, the estrogen-only (Premarin) part of the trial, which focused on nearly 11,000 postmenopausal women who had undergone a hysterectomy, was stopped because of a slightly greater...
...increased risk of breast cancer, heart attack and stroke, leading experts to conclude that for many women the risks of long-term use outweigh the benefits. The recent FDA directive was based on data published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that women on Prempro doubled their risk of Alzheimer's. --By Sora Song
...risk of heart disease and breast cancer but also increased her risk of stroke and doubled her chances of developing dementia if she was 65 or older. The grim research results, on top of those released in 2002, have translated into plummeting prescriptions for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, manufacturer of Prempro (the company also helped fund the critical studies): the tally of 2003 sales of the hormone combo is expected to be down 50% from 2002 sales, which were down 25% from 2001 sales...
...analysis is complete, and even that last hope has been extinguished. Not only does Prempro not protect against dementia, but older women who take it for long periods of time also double their risk of developing Alzheimer's and other cognitive problems. The news, published in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association, comes as a surprise, says principal investigator Sally Shumaker, a public-health expert at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. Earlier studies had suggested that female hormones might be good for the brain...
Although the study results directly apply only to Prempro, its conclusions probably also cover other estrogen-progestin combinations. At any rate, those drugs would need to be studied as vigorously as Prempro has been for any manufacturer to claim otherwise. (Wyeth Pharmaceuticals deserves a good corporate-citizenship award for allowing its product to be so thoroughly vetted and for even paying for some of the work.) It is also important to recognize that the absolute number of extra cases of Alzheimer's disease due to HRT is very small...