Word: progestins
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Last year put a few more nails in the coffin of long-term hormone-replacement therapy. Further examination of the data from the Women's Health Initiative, a study that involved more than 16,000 women, showed that the combination of estrogen and progestin not only raised a postmenopausal woman's 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...
...move that could allow Plan B to live up to its name, an advisory body of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently recommended that the progestin-only emergency contraceptive be sold at drugstores and pharmacies nationwide without a prescription...
Handelsman and other researchers are using a dose of the hormone progestin to turn off sperm production. The problem is that this also suppresses testosterone production. So in order to avoid unpleasant side effects like lethargy and sexual dysfunction, most recent trials also gave men testosterone supplements. In Australia the men were injected every three months with progestin, and every four months they received a small testosterone implant under the skin of the belly, according to the study, published in the October Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism...
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...
Intriguingly, the parts of the Women's Health Initiative that look at the possible long-term health benefits of taking estrogen alone--without progestin--are continuing. That suggests that estrogen alone may yet prove beneficial. (Only women who have undergone a hysterectomy can safely take estrogen alone; estrogen without progestin increases the risk of uterine cancer...