Women's Health

Lengthy HRT Use May Up Ovarian Cancer

HRT Editorial

The ovarian cancer risk seen in the study "might be thought of as small, but enormous numbers of women have been exposed" through HRT use, states an editorial in The Lancet.

HRT use has dropped based on previous studies showing other health risks with long-term HRT use, notes editorialist Steven Narod, MD, FRCP.

Narod directs the Familial Breast Cancer Research Unit at the Women's College Research Institute and is also a professor in the public health sciences department at the University of Toronto.

"With these new data on ovarian cancer, we expect the use of HRT to fall further," writes Narod. We hope that the number of women dying of ovarian cancer will decline as well."

Short-Term HRT Use

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) issued a statement about the study.

"Although long-term use of estrogen appears to increase the risk of ovarian cancer, women should be reassured that short-term use for symptomatic treatment at or near menopause is unlikely to increase the risk of ovarian cancer appreciably," says Robert Rebar, MD, ASRM executive director, in the statement.

"These data, added together with the most recent data from the Women's Health Initiative, provide reassurance all-in-all that short-term use of estrogen is not harmful to symptomatic women," says Rebar.