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Estrogen-only hormones may decrease risk of nuclear opacities

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BOSTON — Women currently taking estrogen-only hormone therapy may experience a protective effect against lens opacification, although a study here had inconclusive findings.

June Weintraub and colleagues here studied the association between postmenopausal hormone use and lens opacities in 480 postmenopausal women. Of these women, 342 had some opacity in one or both eyes. Overall, there was not a significant association between hormone use and presence of any type of opacity. In ordinal logistic regression, compared with those who had never used hormones, current hormone users had multivariate relative risks of cortical opacities of 0.8. For past users, the relative risk was 0.76. For nuclear opacities, the comparable relative risk for current use of hormones was 0.77, and for past use 1.48. Current use of estrogen-only preparations was associated with a 49% decreased risk of nuclear opacities compared to never having used hormones.

“While the overall findings are null, they do not exclude the possibility of a protective effect, particularly among current estrogen users,” the authors concluded.

The study is published in Ophthalmic Epidemiology.