Media outlets are breaking with news that lung cancer in women taking estrogen-progestin combination pills is likelier to be fatal. The women, who developed lung cancer and while taking the medications, were 60 percent likelier to die than those not taking hormones, said the Associated Press (AP).
According to study lead Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, a medical oncologist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, women who smoke and take hormones should stop the hormones; those who smoke and are considering hormones, should reconsider, reported the AP. “Women almost certainly shouldn’t be using hormone replacement therapy and tobacco at the same time,” said Dr. Chlebowski, quoted Reuters.
The study looked at data from the groundbreaking federal Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) and found, said Reuters, that menopausal hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) increases the risk of lung cancer death after five years. Specifically, the trial revealed that smokers taking Wyeth’s combined estrogen-progestin HRT—Prempro—saw an increased risk of death from non-small cell lung cancer in astounding one of every 100 women.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the WHI was a 15-year research program consisting of an array of clinical trials and studies launched in 1991 and involving 161,808 healthy post-menopausal women, generally in their 60s.
The WHI trials were developed to look at the effects of a variety of issues relative to this population, including HRT. The hormone trial consisted of two studies. One was an estrogen-plus-progestin study of women with a uterus, the other, an estrogen-only study of women with no uterus. Time/CNN said in a prior report that the study was halted in 2002 when researchers noted an unusually high risk of cardiac problems and breast cancer in hormone users. The researchers also found more cancers of the breast in women taking Prempro, noted the AP. The WHI prescribed over 16,000 women with either Prempro or a placebo, the AP pointed out.
Experts have long argued about the risks that affect women who begin HRT upon entering menopause—which usually takes place as women enter their 50s—and going on HRT for short time frames, said Time/CNN. We reported late last year that previous analysis of WHI data revealed HRT, even when taken over short periods of time, is linked to breast cancer.
Reuters explained that physicians had once believed that HRT could protect women from a variety of diseases, such as cardiac disease, but the WHI study found that the drugs could raise breast and ovarian cancer, stroke, and other life-threatening diseases, said Reuters. When the study was stopped in 2002, HRT use plummeted, said Reuters.
Now, Chlebowski said earlier research points to a link between hormones and non-small cell lung cancer, which is the most common type of lung cancer. The study was the first to find such a link in a “randomized clinical trial setting,” adding Reuters, pointing out that the study was present at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
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