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The Effect of Combined Estrogen and Progesterone Hormone

Saturday, November 05, 2005

The Effect of Combined Estrogen and Progesterone Hormone Replacement Therapy on Disease Activity in SLE: A Randomized Trial

Annals of Internal Medicine 142(12) part 1: 953-962 (June 21, 2005)

Jill P. Buyon, MD, Michelle A. Petri, MD, MPH, Mimi Y. Kim, sCd, et.al.

Clinicians sometimes avoid hormone therapy (HT) in women with lupus because they think estrogens activate the disease. In this multicenter, double-blind trial, 351 menopausal lupus patients were randomly assigned to HT or placebo for 12 months. Severe flares were infrequent in both groups and were not significantly increased in women taking HT. Women taking HT had more mild to moderate flares than those taking placebo (1.14 flares v. 0.86 flares/person/year). Four women taking HT and one woman taking placebo had thromboembolic (blood clotting) events. The researchers note that these findings are not generalizable to women with high levels of anticardiolipin antibodies, lupus anticoagulant, or previous incidences of thrombosis.

The researchers conclude that adding a short course of hormone therapy is associated with a small risk for increasing the natural flare rate of lupus. Most of these flares are mild to moderate. The benefits of HT can be balanced against the flare risk because HT does not significantly increase the risk for severe flare compared to placebo. This is important information for many women who have been avoiding hormone therapy to ameliorate the unpleasant side effects of menopause for fear of exacerbating their lupus. To read the complete abstract go to:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15968009&query_hl=1

Blogged on 5:30 PM

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