Serious Effects For Women Took Estrogen-Progestin Pills

First the good news. The heart trouble associated with taking HRT ( hormone replacement treatment) goes away 2 years after women stop taking these drugs. As you might recall a study was stopped and women were encouraged to get off these pills ( six years ago) due to both heart risks and risk of breast cancer.

The bad news is that now researchers have found that there are new risks for cancer, particularly lung tumors, in women who had taken estrogen-progestin pills for about five years, according to a report on CNN.

The analysis focused on participants' health in the first two to three years after the study's end. During that time, those who'd taken hormones but stopped were 24% more likely to develop any kind of cancer than women who'd taken dummy pills during the study.

"There's still a lot of uncertainty about the cause of the increased cancer risk," said analysis co-author Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.