By Andrew Pollack (New York Times)
Hormone therapy taken by women to counter the effects of menopause can increase the risk of dying from lung cancer, researchers reported here on Saturday.
The findings represent the latest black mark against a therapy already being used much more sparingly than it once was. But researchers said the new data should serve as a caution to women who did continue to take hormones not to smoke.
“We shouldn’t be using both combined hormone therapy and tobacco at the same time,” said Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of the Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center in California and lead author of the study, which was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Dr. Chlebowski said there was one avoidable lung cancer death over eight years for every 100 women who both smoked and took hormone therapy.
The new analysis used data from the Women’s Health Initiative study, in which women took either Prempro, a drug combining estrogen and progestin, or a placebo. The study was discontinued in 2002 after it was found that the hormone therapy increased the risk of breast cancer.
The new analysis looked specifically at lung cancer for the five and a half years that the women took either the drug or the placebo and for more than two years afterward.
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