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Increased risk for acute pancreatitis found with HT
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The use of postmenopausal hormone therapy may increase the risk for acute pancreatitis, according to research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Viktor Oskarsson, MD, of the unit of nutritional epidemiology at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, and colleagues conducted a prospective cohort study of patients from the population-based Swedish Mammography Cohort.
The study included 31,494 postmenopausal women aged 48 to 83 years who completed a survey in 1997 about their use of HT. At baseline, 42% (n=13,113) of the participants were using HT, and 12% (n=3,660) had used HT in the past. To study the link between HT and acute pancreatitis, the researchers linked the cohort to the hospital-based Swedish National Patient Register to determine hospital admissions for acute pancreatitis throughout the follow-up period of 1997 to 2010.
During the follow-up period, the researchers found 237 cases of incident acute pancreatitis. Using Cox proportional hazard models, the researchers calculated RRs.
Researchers found a 1.57 greater risk (95% CI, 1.2-2.05) of acute pancreatitis among women who used HT at some point (currently or in the past) compared with women who had never used HT. The researchers also found the risk to be higher among women who used systemic therapy compared with local therapy (RR=1.92; 95% CI, 1.38-2.66) and in women who used HT for longer than 10 years (RR=1.87; 95% CI, 1.11-3.17).
“The role of the preparation, dose and route of administration of hormone replacement therapy merits further investigation. If these findings are confirmed by other studies, the risk of acute pancreatitis should be considered when hormone replacement therapy is prescribed,” the researchers wrote.
Disclosures: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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