Hormone Replacement Therapy Increases Risk of Lung Cancer Death: Study

A new study suggests that hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which combines estrogen and progestin treatments, can increase a woman’s risk of dying from lung cancer by 71 percent.

The study, appearing online and in an upcoming issue of the medical journal Lancet, was conducted by researchers at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbour-UCLA Medical Center. The study results comes as the pharmaceutical giant Wyeth faces about 5,000 lawsuits from women who claim they failed to warn them of the risks of breast cancer from hormone replacement therapy.

Researchers looked at 16,608 postmenopausal women between the ages of 50 and 79 in the U.S, who were given either hormone treatment or a placebo. After eight years, the study found that women taking hormone replacement drugs died from lung cancer at a higher rate than those taking a placebo, finding a 71% increased risk.

The study also found that women undergoing HRT were 28 percent more likely to develop lung cancer, but researchers cautioned that the increased HRT lung cancer risk findings were not statistically significant, meaning they could be attributed to chance.

The risk of lung cancer death associated with hormone replacement treatment was most significantly increased with non-small-cell lung cancer. An editorial that accompanied the study online, written by Dr. Apar Kishor Ganti of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, noted that the study and other recent findings raise the question of whether hormone therapy should be in use.

HRT uses various hormones and progestins to artificially boost hormone levels in women undergoing menopause due to surgery or in postmenopausal women to provide relief for menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, irregular menstruation or weight gain.

Studies in 2002 by the Women’s Health Initiative, part of the National Institutes of Health, found that women receiving HRT were at higher risk of breast cancer, strokes and heart attacks. Those studies were followed by a number of HRT lawsuits over Wyeth’s Prempro and Premarin, which were used by as many as 6 million women worldwide.