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Hormone Therapy May Make Lung Cancer More Likely

(HealthDay News) -- Taking a combination form of hormone replacement therapy, which includes both estrogen and progestin, increases a woman's risk for dying from lung cancer, a new study has found.

The finding stems from an analysis of data from the Women's Health Initiative trial on 16,608 postmenopausal women, aged 50 to 79, in the United States who had been randomly assigned to take either a once-daily tablet of 0.625 milligrams conjugated equine estrogen plus 2.5 mg medroxyprogesterone acetate or a placebo.

After eight years, 73 women taking the hormone therapy and 40 women in the placebo group had died of lung cancer. That meant, according to the researchers, that women who took the drug were 71 percent more likely to die from the disease.

The study also found that women taking the hormone therapy were 28 percent more likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer, although the study noted that the finding was not statistically significant.

"Treatment with estrogen plus progestin in postmenopausal women ...

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