NC Healthcare Coverage Blog

There is more bad news about hormone therapy for menopause symptoms. A new study indicates that lung cancer is more prone to be fatal in women who are taking estrogen-progestin pills.

Women using hormones, who had developed lung cancer, were more than two times as likely to die from lung cancer as women who were not taking hormones, according to reports from Many 30.

These new discoveries suggest that smokers should stop taking hormones, and careful consideration should be taken for those who have not yet started taking hormones, according to Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Leading the analysis, he presented results at a meeting of the oncology society in Florida.

This is the most recent finding form the Women’s Health Initiative, which is a federal study in which 16,608 women were given either Prempro or fake pills. In 2002, the study was ended because researchers noticed an increase in breast cancers in women taking Prempro, the estrogen-progestin pill that is made by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. They are still recording the impact on the women in the study.

Non-small-cell lung cancer, which is the most common type, was observed in the new analysis. No difference was found in the amount of lung cancers that developed in hormone users after 5 years of follow-up.

On the other hand, lung cancer proved to be fatal in 46 percent of hormone users who had already developed it, versus 27 percent of those who were given the fake pills.

Dr. Richard Schilsky, a cancer specialist at the University of Chicago and president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said that “It’s another piece of evidence to suggest that hormone replacement therapy should be used with great caution.”