Possible HRT Link to Lung Cancer Death

ORLANDO, Fla., June 1, 2009— -- In what may be another nail in the coffin of combination hormone replacement therapy (HRT), researchers said the menopause treatment is linked to an increased risk of dying of lung cancer.

In findings from the landmark Women's Health Initiative, using estrogen and progestin lead to a 59 percent increase in the risk of death if a woman developed non-small cell lung cancer, Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles said at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

"This is one of a series of problems, especially with cancer, that work against widespread use of estrogen and progestin," Chlebowski said.

But despite those earlier problems -- increased risk of stroke, blood clots and breast cancer -- many postmenopausal women are use the combined hormone therapy to fight the symptoms of menopause, Chlebowski said.

He said between 25 and 30 million prescriptions are written every year, and 15 percent of postmenopausal women still use the combination.

The Women's Health Initiative study of combined hormone therapy enrolled 16,608 postmenopausal women ages 50 through 79 and randomly assigned them to receive either a dummy placebo treatment or the two hormones.

The study was stopped early when it became obvious that a range of harms from the treatment outweighed the benefits, Chlebowski said.

As the researchers followed the participants, they noticed a significant increase in both fatal and nonfatal cancers among those who got the hormones.

To try to explain the increase, they looked at the effect of the hormones on lung cancer, he said.