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TORONTO, CANADA. Doubts about the benefits of hormone (estrogen)
replacement therapy (HRT) continue to surface. Associations
between HRT and an increased risk of pancreatitis, systemic lupus
erythematosus, asthma, temporomandibular pain, and general
abdominal pain have been reported in recent medical literature.
Medical researchers have also begun to question the validity of
earlier studies "proving" the benefits of HRT; they point out that
the women in the HRT groups were generally significantly healthier
than the controls.
Researchers at the University of Toronto now report that women who
have recently begun estrogen replacement therapy are much more
likely to undergo a gallbladder operation (cholecystectomy) or
appendectomy (removal of the appendix). Their study involved
three groups of women whose medical data was obtained from the
Ontario health administrative databases covering 800,000 women
over the age of 65 years. One group of women had been prescribed
levothyroxine (a thyroid medication), another dihydropyridine
calcium-channel antagonists (DCCA) and the third HRT. Estrogen is
known to activate inflammation and pain responses while the other
two medications have no such effects. After 18 months of follow-
up the researchers concluded that women on HRT were twice as
likely to end up having surgery to remove their gallbladder or
their appendix than were women taking the other medications. They
ascribe this increased risk of surgery to the inflammatory effects
of estrogen and point out that there is also evidence that new HRT
recipients may initially be at an increased risk for
cardiovascular disease and osteoarthritis of the hip.
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