Research

Hormonal

Postmenopausal women using combined estrogen and progestin therapy experience a marked decrease in the risk of major coronary heart disease compared to non-users, with the addition of progestin not attenuating the cardioprotective effects of estrogen.

For postmenopausal women considering hormone therapy, current use of combined estrogen and progestin is associated with a significantly lower risk of major coronary heart disease compared to not using hormones. The addition of progestin does not appear to cancel out the heart-protective benefits of estrogen.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
We observed a marked decrease in the risk of major coronary heart disease among women who took estrogen with progestin, as compared with the risk among women who did not use hormones (multivariate adjusted relative risk, 0.39; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.19 to 0.78)... The addition of progestin does not appear to attenuate the cardioprotective effects of postmenopausal estrogen therapy.
Francine Grodstein et al. · New England Journal of Medicine · 1996

Why this rating

Large prospective cohort study (Nurses' Health Study, N=59,337) with long follow-up (up to 16 years) and multivariate adjustment, though observational design limits causal inference compared to RCTs.

Source

Postmenopausal Estrogen and Progestin Use and the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

Francine Grodstein et al. · New England Journal of Medicine · 1996

DOI 10.1056/nejm199608153350701

cohort · n=59337Cited 1,321×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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