Hormone Therapy Doesn't Boost Heart Attack Risk in Younger Women: Study

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Roussouw stressed that, "It's OK to use hormone therapy within that window but take care of risk factors for stroke and have mammograms."

Although previous studies looking at hormone therapy in postmenopausal women had yielded conflicting results when it came to coronary heart disease, some research had hinted that age and time from menopause might influence the effect of hormone therapy.

The new study, published in the April 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was a secondary analysis of data from the WHI trial. The original trial included 10,739 postmenopausal women, aged 50 to 79, who had undergone a hysterectomy and were randomly chosen to receive estrogen or a placebo. A second group of 16,608 postmenopausal women who had not had a hysterectomy were randomly selected to receive estrogen plus progestin or a placebo. Women who still have a uterus can't take estrogen alone because it can cause cancer.

Overall, hormone therapy did not reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. But women who began hormone therapy within 10 years of the onset of menopause (50 to 59 years of age) had a slightly lower risk of coronary heart disease than women who began the therapy later on, the study concluded.

Younger women taking hormones had a slightly reduced risk of death, but the trend was considered "nonsignificant."

Older women taking hormones who still had menopausal symptoms had a higher risk of heart disease. "This was a surprise and needs further work," Roussouw said. "For now, these women need to look carefully at their risk factors (for heart disease) rather than whether or not to use hormones."

"We think that this is helpful to women in their decision-making," he added. "Today, we don't use hormone therapy for the prevention of heart disease and these findings don't change that. But they help a little in decision-making because it defines when hormone therapy is a reasonable option and when it's not."

More information

For more on HRT, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.