Oestrogen helps heart

Oestrogen helps heart

Younger women who start taking oestrogen as soon as they enter menopause may be protected from heart disease, researchers say.

They found women aged 50 to 59 who took oestrogen were 30 per cent to 40 per cent less likely than women taking placebos to have large amounts of calcified plaque in their arteries – a widely accepted predictor of heart attack risk.

When women took their oestrogen religiously, the risk was 60 per cent lower, they reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr JoAnn Manson of Harvard Medical School's Brigham and Women's Hospital, who led the study, says the results should be reassuring to women in their 50s who have been taking oestrogen for their menopausal symptoms.

But, she stresses, hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, is not completely safe and women should not take it unless they have a good reason to.

"Hormone therapy should not be used for the express purpose of preventing cardiovascular disease due to other known risks, and it should be limited to treatment of menopausal symptoms at the lowest dose for the shortest duration necessary," Dr Manson says.

"So I do not believe it should be started in all women for the purpose of protecting their hearts."

Dr Manson led the original Women's Health Initiative study, which found in 2002 that hormone replacement therapy raised the risk of blood clots, breast cancer and heart attacks.

Many women stopped taking HRT, though researchers at the time noted that many women in their study were well past menopause, with an average age of 63.

"There are still many women out there with moderate to severe symptoms who are not seeking treatment because they are concerned that oestrogen could increase the risk of heart disease and other health problems," she says.

The new finding, based on 1064 women, "does provide some additional reassurance for women who have been denying themselves relief," Dr Manson says.

Robert Rebar, executive director of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, says, "We are clearly learning that the benefits of oestrogen in young, healthy, symptomatic, postmenopausal women outweigh the risks."

source : www.stuff.co.nz