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Mortality risks remain unchanged with menopausal hormone therapy

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SAN DIEGO — Menopausal hormone therapy does not appear to significantly alter the risk for all-cause mortality, or deaths related to cardiovascular disease or breast cancer, according to research presented at The Endocrine Society annual meeting.

Similarly, no change is seen in mortality due to lung cancer, ovarian cancer and colorectal cancer with treatment, according to researchers.

“Hormone therapy in postmenopausal women does not seem to affect the risk of mortality,” Khalid Benkhadra, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, said in a press conference. “Women with bothersome symptoms can engage with their physician in shared decision making to discuss this treatment.”

Khalid Benkhadra

Benkhadra and colleagues comprehensively searched several online databases — Ovid Medline In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations, Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE, Ovid Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Ovid Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Scopus  — from earliest inception to August 2013.

The investigators included randomized trials with a follow-up of at least 6 months that compared menopausal hormone therapy with either placebo or no treatment and reported an effect size for outcomes; these included more than 52,000 women (mean age, 62 years) who were followed, on average, for 5 years.

“We looked at the risk of dying from any cause, cardiovascular events, from breast, lung, ovarian and colorectal cancers, and stroke,” Benkhadra said.

No association was observed between all-cause mortality and menopausal hormone therapy (RR = 0.99; 95% CI, 0.94-1.05); further, no significant interaction existed based on hormone type or preexisting heart disease.  

No association was found between the use of menopausal hormone therapy and death from myocardial infarction (RR = 1.04; 95% CI, 0.87-1.23), breast cancer (RR = 0.93, 95% CI, 0.26-3.32) or stroke (RR = 1.49; 95% CI, 0.95-2.31).

“There was no significant effect of hormone therapy on the risk of dying,” Benkhadra said. “We also investigated the types of menopausal hormone therapy … and we had the same result.” – by Allegra Tiver

Reference:

Benkhadra K. Poster Board FRI-125. Presented at: The Endocrine Society Annual Meeting; March 5-8, 2015, San Diego.  

Disclosure: Benkhadra reports no relevant financial disclosures.