ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 7, 1996 TAG: 9602070064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: Associated Press
Menopausal women who take estrogen alone run a higher-than-normal chance of cancer of the uterus, but combining estrogen with the hormone progestin can counteract the risk, a study confirms.
The study is the largest and most rigorous to explore how hormone replacement therapy - whose benefits include vastly reducing the risk of heart disease - may increase the risk of uterine cancer.
The study looked for three years at 596 postmenopausal women who were given hormone replacement therapy at seven hospitals. The findings were published in today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
In the study, 34.4 percent of the women who took estrogen alone developed moderate to severe cases of excessive cell growth in the uterine lining, a precursor of uterine cancer.
But fewer than 1 percent of women who took any of three formulations of estrogen-plus-progestin developed the same kinds of changes, researchers found. That was the same rate seen in women who took a placebo.
``If a woman is going to take hormone replacement and she has a uterus, we recommend she seriously consider the use of estrogen with a progestin,'' said lead author Dr. Howard L. Judd, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine.
``And in women who don't have a uterus, we would recommend they take estrogen-only therapy. Changes in cardiovascular risk factors are better with estrogen alone.''
LENGTH: Short : 37 linesby CNB