Hormone therapy use, duration not tied to brain tumor risk for menopausal women

Key takeaways:

• Hormone therapy use and duration were not associated with glioma risk among menopausal women overall.
• In subgroup analyses, researchers observed a positive association among women with at least a college degree.

Among menopausal women, hormone therapy use and duration were not associated with brain malignancy risk, although researchers cautioned that more research is needed, according to findings published in Menopause.

“The widespread use of HT is evident, with an estimated 600 million woman-years of HT usage recorded in Western countries over the past 50 years, beginning in 1970. As a result, a thorough understanding of the therapeutic benefits of HT in comparison to its potential risks is crucial for optimizing clinical decision-making and enhancing women’s health outcomes,” Jinyu Pan, MSN, from the department of neurosurgery at Chongqing General Hospital at Chongqing University in China, and colleagues wrote. “Epidemiological studies have yielded inconsistent findings concerning the relationship between HT and glioma risk, as highlighted in two meta-analyses published in 2018 and 2023.”

Pan and colleagues evaluated data from 75,335 women (median age, 62 years) aged 50 to 78 years enrolled in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial between 1993 and 2001. Researchers evaluated the association between HT use and risk for glioma.

During a median follow-up period of 11.82 years, 101 menopausal women were diagnosed with glioma.

Researchers observed no association between HT use and glioma risk (HR = 1.16; 95% CI, 0.75-1.81). In addition, researchers observed no associations between HT use and glioma risk when adjusting for HT status or duration.

In a subgroup analysis, adjusted for education, marital status, BMI, oral contraceptive use and age at menopause, researchers noted a positive association between HT use and glioma risk for women with at least a college degree (HR = 3; 95% CI, 1.02-8.84).

HT duration was not significantly associated with glioma risk.

“To confirm this relationship, future studies with larger sample sizes, prospective design and extended follow-up periods are necessary, with particular focus on the specific components of HT and cumulative duration of use,” the researchers wrote.