The risks of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) have made headlines only in recent years, but there had long been warning signs that supplemental estrogen might be more hazardous than healthful, a new report contends. In 2002, a large US clinical trial called the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was stopped when early findings showed that HRT after menopause slightly raised a woman's risk of breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and blood clots. Given the long-standing belief that HRT helped protect older women from cardiovascular disease, the findings were widely received with disappointment and surprise. But no one should have been caught off guard, a group of researchers and women's health advocates argues in a perspective piece published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Not only had the potential cancer risks of estrogen replacement been known for decades, the presumed heart benefits were being questioned as early as the mid-1970s, according to the authors, led by Professor Nancy Krieger of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. --More 2110 Local Time 1810 GMT
