EFN

New research shows that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to counter the effects of menopause, is connected with a higher risk of dying in women diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer.

This new research show that after five years on Wyeth’s Prempro, a combination of the hormones estrogen as well as progestin, 67 women died from non-small cell lung cancer, compared with 39 on placebo. The findings of the trial, which analyzed women age 50 to 79 and included current as well as former smokers, were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Orlando.

The study centered on the incidence of the most common form of lung cancer and its mortality rate over a time period of almost 5.5 years comparing women who followed the hormonal treatment and another group that took placebos.

“We shouldn’t be using both combined hormone therapy and tobacco at the same time,” said Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of the Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center in California and lead author of the study, which was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. “Women almost certainly shouldn’t be using combined hormone therapy and tobacco at the same time”.

However, there have been only 106 lung cancer deaths in the study so far,  which is too few to make conclusions about risk, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld of the American Cancer Society.

Chlebowski stated that ealier research proposed that hormones play a role in non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease, since women generaly have higher survival rates than men and react better to certain therapies.