By AVRUM BLUMING AND CAROL TAVRIS | L.A. TIMES
Over its long history, hormone replacement therapy for women in menopause has been the Jekyll and Hyde of medications. It has careened from savior to villain, from cure-all for every female complaint to poison. And when in 2002, the National Institutes of Health-funded, $1-billion Women’s Health Initiative loudly announced that women taking HRT had an increased risk of breast cancer, its role as “savior” all but disappeared. Other dire alleged consequences included heart disease, stroke, dementia and even “all-cause mortality.”
Understandably, millions of women panicked, along with much of the medical establishment, and dropped the option of hormone therapy altogether. (Estrogen is given by itself to women who have had hysterectomies and, as HRT, in combination with progesterone to those who still have a uterus.)