What are the risks of hormone treatment?

These are the risks of hormone treatment:

• Blood clots
• Heart attack
• Stroke
• Breast cancer
• Gallbladder disease

There are risks of taking any drugs, and we base our decision to take a particular drug on whether its benefit is worth the harm it might cause. It has been known for decades that hormone treatment has some risks. Before we learned the results of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), many health care providers and women believed that the benefits of taking hormone treatment were great enough to expose ourselves to the risks.

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• Increases Risk of Stroke and Blood Clots: HT has been linked to a greater risk of blood clots and strokes. The older the woman, and the higher the hormone dosage, the greater her risk of stroke. According to JoAnn Manson, MD, one of the principal investigators of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) hormone therapy trials, HT patches may pose less risk than other methods. Women with a personal or family history of blood clots or strokes should avoid hormone therapy altogether.
• Boosts Breast Cancer Risk: Combination hormone therapy poses a small, though real, increase in breast cancer risk, especially after four or five years of use. According to WHI researcher Matthew Allison, MD, MPH, obesity, not exercising, and too much alcohol pose greater breast cancer risks. "Still, women at least deserve to be informed that the rate of breast cancer in women on HT becomes noticeable at a five-year point," says Margery Gass, MD, executive director of the North American Menopause Society.

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