Estrogen Not Effective After Menopause

Estrogen pills have little effect on older women's quality of life, fresh evidence from a landmark study shows in yet another blow to the myth that most women need the hormones to feel better after menopause. More than 10,000 women with an average age of 63 were asked about their general health, mental, physical and social functioning, energy level and emotional health before and a year after they started taking either estrogen or dummy pills. Some scores dipped and others increased slightly, but there was little overall difference between the groups, which each included more than 5,000 women. Women taking estrogen reported slightly fewer sleep problems but slightly worse social functioning than those on dummy pills, but the differences were minimal. Overall quality-of-life scores were high for both groups. Participants were part of the government's Women's Health Initiative, which did a long-running study on the risks and benefits of hormones. Use plummeted after results in 2002 linked estrogen-progestin pills sold as Prempro with an increased risk for heart attacks, breast cancer and strokes in postmenopausal women. Later results showed estrogen-only pills, sold as Premarin, slightly increased older women's risk of a stroke and possibly dementia. The new results for estrogen-only pills echo previous data from the same study showing estrogen-progestin had little effect on older women's overall well-being and quality of life. The 10,739 women in the latest study, which appeared in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, had all had hysterectomies.