More Bad News for Hormone Drugs in U.S. Study
 (Chicago, Reuters Health, 6/24/03)

The Women's Health Initiative, a government study of 16,608 post-menopausal women who were given either a placebo or Prempro, an estrogen-progestin combination commonly prescribed by doctors, had to be cut short in 2002 because of the alarmingly high incidence of stroke, breast cancer and heart attack among participants. Now Harbor-UCLA Research and Education Institute, Torrance, California, has reviewed the results of the original study and has confirmed a 26% increased risk of breast cancer for women taking the drug, finding that these drug-induced cancers are harder to detect and to treat. A separate study by scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle reviewed 51 previously published studies and concluded that the risk of breast cancer increased even when "progestin is not taken every day in combination with estrogen."