Research

Hormonal

Combined estrogen plus progestin therapy increases the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, pulmonary embolism, and invasive breast cancer in healthy postmenopausal women, outweighing benefits for fracture prevention and colorectal cancer reduction.

For healthy postmenopausal women considering hormone therapy primarily to prevent heart disease or other chronic conditions, current evidence from the Women's Health Initiative indicates that the risks (including heart disease, stroke, blood clots, and breast cancer) outweigh the benefits (reduced hip fractures and colorectal cancer). Therefore, this regimen is not recommended for primary prevention.

StrongRefutesVERY_HIGH confidence
Overall health risks exceeded benefits from use of combined estrogen plus progestin for an average 5.2-year follow-up among healthy postmenopausal US women... the results indicate that this regimen should not be initiated or continued for primary prevention of CHD.
Writing Group for the Women's Health Initiative Investigators · JAMA · 2002

Why this rating

Large-scale, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (n=16,608) with rigorous monitoring and adjudication.

Source

Risks and Benefits of Estrogen Plus Progestin in Healthy Postmenopausal Women: Principal Results From the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Trial

Writing Group for the Women's Health Initiative Investigators · JAMA · 2002

DOI 10.1001/jama.288.3.321

rct · n=16608Cited 15,796×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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