HRT heart disease risks first published in 1997

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 27 Feb 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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Women could and should have been told about the risks related to HRT (hormone replacement therapy) many years ago. Studies which showed a link between HRT and heart disease risk was first published in 1997.

Most of the studies were carried out by drug companies and were not made public. It was not until 5 years later, in 2002, when a large US trial was stopped that the information became public knowledge.

Researchers are asking the pharmaceutical industry to be more open about its research. They wrote about this in the British Medical Journal. www.bmj.com.

If fact, 23 studies were published before 2002, according to Professor Klim McPherson of Oxford University and Professor Elina Hemminki of the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health in Helsinki.

They said that many of the studies they examined were carried out by pharmaceutical companies. Apparently, they were used to help them obtain licences for Hormone Replacement Therapy drugs.

In these studies (the ones that never became public knowledge) they found that women were more likely to have heart problems if they were on HRT.

'A higher proportion of the women taking hormone replacement therapy had cardiovascular events than women in the control groups,' they said.

They said that when the findings were published in 1997 they were rejected and ridiculed.

They went through data in six other studies (trials) which showed similar links to heart disease and breast cancer. They had to go to court to get the studies. These had been carried out by pharmaceutical companies. These studies were done before 2002.

They said there should be new rules to make sure that there was better access to studies carried out by pharmaceutical companies.

The ABPI (Association of British Pharmaceutical Companies) said that the pharmaceutical industry was becoming more open with their research.