Hormone therapy may decrease risk of cardiovascular disease in post-menopausal women
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- Created on Sunday, 14 October 2012 13:27
- Written by USC
Los Angeles, California - Howard N. Hodis, M.D., is the director of the Atherosclerosis Research Unit in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine in the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. His research focuses on the risk factors of atherosclerosis - the underlying cause of heart disease and stroke - and how they can be modified.
Hodis is principal investigator of the ELITE (Early versus Late Intervention Trial with Estradiol), a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 2x2 trial of post-menopausal women funded by the National Institutes of Health. ELITE is the only clinical trial testing the "timing hypothesis" -- that is, determining whether estrogen therapy will reduce cardiovascular disease when administered on average three years after menopause versus initiation of estrogen therapy on average 15 years after menopause.
"Results from the Danish Osteoporosis Prevention Study published in the British Medical Journal support our hypothesis that hormone therapy benefits a woman's overall cardiovascular health if administered at or soon after menopause and continued long-term; and it does so safely with reduction in stroke and breast cancer. These new trial results are different to those from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) reported 10 years ago. In the WHI study, women were much older, on average 63 years old and more than 10 years after menopause when they started HRT."