$ 1.95   |    FEBRUARY 2005

AWOMAN’S RISK from taking menopause hormones may depend on the age she starts taking them, according to an ongoing review of the two largest hormone studies. Data from one of the studies, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), linked estrogen-progestin pills such as Prempro to increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and breast cancer. So high were the risks, in fact, that the government study was halted two years ago, and many women were scared off hormone therapy altogether. (Subsequent analysis also found risk from estrogen-only pills such as Premarin.) But an earlier, 2000 analysis of data from the Nurses Health Study (NHS), another hormone test, had found seemingly contradictory results: Subjects who took hormones were 40 percent less likely to suffer heart attacks.

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