This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Discontinuation of HT may increase risk for hypertension
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
After the results of the Women’s Health Initiative more than a decade ago, many patients discontinued hormone therapy or estrogen therapy. New data published in the journal Menopause suggest that discontinuing hormone therapy could increase a woman’s risk for developing hypertension, thus negatively affecting their quality of life.
“The publication is of importance, as it compares the women who stopped hormones after the publication of the Women’s Health Initiative (which received huge publicity and scared many women who stopped their hormones as a result) to those who continued treatment,” study researcher Michelle P. Warren, MD, told Endocrine Today.
Michelle P. Warren
Warren, medical director for the Center for Menopause, Hormonal Disorders and Women’s Health, professor of medicine and obstetrics and gynecology, Wyeth Professor of Women’s Health at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, and colleagues conducted a retrospective study on 310 women aged 56 to 73 years recruited by their physicians from Columbia University Medical Center, St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital and from offices of practitioners in New York City between 2009 and 2012.
The researchers categorized patients into three groups: group 1 (n=159) comprised women who remained on HT/ET; group 2 (n=43) included women who resumed HT/ET after stopping for at least 6 months; and group 3 (n=108) consisted of women who stopped HT/ET and did not resume therapy.
“We found that women who stopped their hormones were almost twice as likely to be on high blood pressure medicine,” said Warren, who is also an Endocrine Today Editorial Board member. “Those who stayed on hormones had a better quality of life and were more apt to be working. This is important, as it has been thought that hormones may protect the cardiovascular system if started at the normal age of menopause.”
According to data, women’s characteristics were similar, except that patients in group 3 were aged 1.5 years older and had 4.4 years less HT/ET use vs. groups 1 and 2.
Quality-of-life scores appeared significantly lower among patients in group 3 (83.4) compared with patients in groups 1 and 2 (87.6; P<.02), more so in the occupational satisfaction scale, researchers wrote. Further data indicate about 16.6% of women in group 1 and 16.3% of women in group 2 were on antihypertensive medication vs. 27.4% in group 3 (P<.04).
“Some studies have shown that there is a big drop off in women working at age 50, which may be related to symptoms of menopause. No one has looked at this large group of women who stopped hormones very suddenly. This is probably the largest number of patients stopping medicine in a short time period in the history of American medicine,” Warren said.
Therefore, Warren and colleagues observed that a discontinuation of HT could have negative implications on quality of life, predisposing some women to hypertension. – by Samantha Costa
For more information:
Warren MP. Menopause. 2013;doi:10.1097/gme.0b013e31828cfd3b.
Michelle P. Warren, MD, can be reached at New York Presbyterian Hospital, 622 W. 168th St., New York, NY 10032; email: mpw1@columbia.edu.
Disclosure: Warren reports being on the speakers’ bureau for Ascend Pharmaceuticals and has received grants for a women’s health scholarship from Pfizer.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts