Menopause, Hormones, and You

In the Wall Street Journal today there is a review article regarding recent literature published on menopausal hormone replacement. This article summarizes the debate regarding hormone therapy but does not get to the meat of an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA). The article has some controversy swriling around it. Mainly, that the p-value (likelihood of chance association) was adjusted after the analysis in response to a JAMA request. This is not usually standard practice for publishers as the p-value is usually accepted at 0.05. In this case it is 0.01. Either way the findings are what is interesting.

Traditionally the thought was that menopause and estrogen deficiency was a disease state. As such the "old time" doctors thought that hormone replacement helped prevent stroke and heart attack risk. This was flipped on its head in 2002 when the WHI released some findings which stated that you are actually at increased risk of heart attack or stroke while on the therapy!
This new study points out that there is a window of new onset menopause where therapy does lower risk, however in the elderly >70 years old there is an increased risk. I think that this study has some merit. However, the results can only be interpreted through a genomic eye. Recently data were released regarding ESR1(estrogen receptor alpha) and increased risk of heart attack in men. Currently there are no definitive data on whether estrogen PLUS some gene polymorphism put you at increased or decreased risk. When that data comes, rest assured that labs will be lining up the postmenopausal women. And when that data comes, you will hear it here First!