Climacteric : the journal of the International Menopause Society
-
Cardiovascular risk is poorly managed in women, especially during the menopausal transition when susceptibility to cardiovascular events increases. Clear gender differences exist in the epidemiology, symptoms, diagnosis, progression, prognosis and management of cardiovascular risk. Key risk factors that need to be controlled in the perimenopausal woman are hypertension, dyslipidemia, obesity and other components of the metabolic syndrome, with the avoidance and careful control of diabetes. ⋯ Whether the findings of WHI in older postmenopausal women can be applied to younger perimenopausal women is unknown. It is increasingly recognized that hormone therapy is inappropriate for older postmenopausal women no longer displaying menopausal symptoms. Both gynecologists and cardiovascular physicians have an important role to play in identifying perimenopausal women at risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, and should work as a team to identify and manage risk factors, such as hypertension.
-
In a follow-up study of 948,576 women, based on respective relative risk (RR) estimates of 1.23 and 1.20 for incident and fatal ovarian cancer among current users of postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT), the Million Women Study investigators have estimated that, since 1991, HT has resulted in 1300 additional cases and 1000 deaths. ⋯ Only the findings among non-hysterectomized women were to some limited extent interpretable and, among them, there was virtually no evidence to suggest that current HT use increases the risk of ovarian cancer. It follows that the estimated numbers of additional cases of incident and fatal ovarian cancer that were attributed to HT use were spurious, and arbitrary extrapolation back to 1991, which was many years before the Million Women Study, had no scientific rationale.