Lung Cancer Deaths Rise With Hormone Replacement Therapy

Doctors once thought that hormone therapy, or HRT, could protect women from chronic diseases, especially heart disease. However, a new study by U.S researchers released on Saturday indicated that the use of hormone-replacement therapy by menopausal women increases their risk of death from lung cancer by 60 percent after five years.

The trial studied the use of Wyeth's combined estrogen/progestin hormone-replacement therapy, Prempro. Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles led the analysis and presented results at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Florida.

The study examined non-small-cell lung cancer, by far the most common type. While the study found no big difference in the number of lung cancers that developed in hormone users after five years on the pills and more than two years later, lung cancer proved fatal in 46 percent of hormone users who developed it versus 27 percent of those given placebos.

The study gave 16,608 women either Prempro or placebos. It was stopped in 2002 when researchers saw more breast cancers in those on Prempro, but researchers continue to follow women in the study.

Lung cancer is the world's top cancer killer. In the U.S alone, there were more than 215,000 new cases and nearly 162,000 deaths from it last year.