HRT Linked With Increased Risk Of Lung Cancer, Study Finds

Main Category: Menopause
Also Included In: Endocrinology;  Lung Cancer
Article Date: 23 Sep 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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Women who take hormone replacement therapy are nearly twice as likely to die from lung cancer, according to a study published in the journal Lancet, the Los Angeles Times reports. The study expands on the initial results of the landmark Women's Health Initiative. One finding of the WHI was that a combination treatment of estrogen and progestin might have an effect on lung cancer. The WHI, which involved more than 16,000 women, also aimed to explore the benefits of combined estrogen and progestin therapy on menopause symptoms and whether it could lower the risk of heart attack and stroke. However, researchers ended the HRT portion of the study prematurely after about five-and-one-half years when they found that the treatment increased the risk for breast cancer, heart disease and stroke.

For the new study, Rowan Chlebowski, a physician at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and colleagues analyzed WHI data for two and one-half years after women stopped taking HRT. After the total eight-year period, 109 women who received the combination treatment were diagnosed with lung cancer, compared with 85 diagnoses among women who received a placebo -- a 23% increase.

When Chlebowski and his team examined the number of deaths among the two groups, they found that 73 women who received HRT died, compared with 40 women in the placebo group -- a 71% increase. Chlebowski said the increase in lung cancer deaths accounted for 50% of the overall increase in deaths among the women using HRT. The study also found that 62 women in the treatment group died from non-small-cell lung cancer, a common form of the cancer in women, compared with 31 women in the placebo group.

"The findings suggest that the hormones do not cause lung cancer, but that they accelerate the growth of existing tumors, making them more aggressive and more likely to metastasize," Chlebowski said.

In an accompanying editorial, Apar Kishor Ganti of the University of Nebraska Medical Center wrote that the study's findings "seriously question whether hormone-replacement therapy has any role in medicine today" (Maugh, Los Angeles Times, 9/20).

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