Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Interact with HRT, and More, University of Pennsylvania Study Finds

Any cardio protective effect of hormone replacement therapy may be inhibited if women are taking a particular type of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory pain killer, report researchers led by Garret FitzGerald from University of Pennsylvania in a paper published this week in PLoS Medicine.. The researchers examined the medical records of 1,673 women aged between 50 and 84 years from the UK’s General Practice Research Database who had heart attacks or who died from coronary heart disease and compared them with 7,005 control women. Current use of hormone replacement therapy was associated with a significantly lower risk of heart attack than non-use; with an odds ratio of 0.78. However, in women who used traditional nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, which variably inhibit both cyclooxygenase (COX)-1 and COX-2, at the same time as hormone replacement therapy, the chance of heart attack among this group o f women, as compared to nonusers of these NSAIDs and hormone replacement therapy, was 1.5, which was not significantly different.