Less than one-third of women aware of landmark hormone therapy study, Stanford resear...( STANFORD Calif. - Despite the huge p...),Health

STANFORD, Calif. - Despite the huge publicity generated by a 2002 study on the potential dangers of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women, new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine found that only 29 percent of women surveyed knew about the study two years later.

Additionally, the women were able to correctly identify the possible benefits and risks linked to hormone therapy just 40 percent of the time.

Senior author Randall Stafford, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, said the new study points out that the medical profession hasn't yet figured out an effective way of communicating crucial health information to patients.

"This study suggests that we have a flawed mechanism for getting information down to the level of the population," Stafford said. "Although we looked specifically at menopause and hormone therapy, the findings have consequences for many other medical issues."

Stafford's results are published in the September/October issue of the journal Menopause.

Few research studies have had the impact on public health recommendations as the 2002 results reported by the federally funded Women's Health Initiative, the longest-ever examination of the health of postmenopausal women. One part of WHI focused on hormone therapy, which is used to ease the symptoms of menopause. Hormone therapy also had been widely prescribed for preventive purposes, based partly on earlier observational studies suggesting that it helped protect women against heart disease, weak bones and dementia.

But in July 2002, the WHI abruptly halted the arm of the study dealing with the combination of estrogen and progestin therapy after initial data showed women taking the hormones were experiencing higher rates of breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and blood clots than those taking placebos. In April 2004, the WHI halted the portion of the study for estrogen-only t
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