Hormone Patch Found to be Safer than Pills for Menopause
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A recent study shows that women who struggle from the symptoms of menopause should use a hormone patch or gel before resorting to pills in order to protect themselves from the dangerous blood clots.
Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said, “The French study, while not the final word, is the strongest proof yet that this may be true.”
The French study compared Wyeth’s Prempro and Premarin, which contain synthetic estrogens made from the urine of pregnant horses. Two hundred and seventy-one women from forty-five to seventy years old suffered blood clots while on the patch compared to six hundred and ten women taking hormone pills.
Dr. Karen Bradshaw, director of women’s health and an endocrinology specialist at UT Southwestern Medical Center said, “Part of the reason we think oral estrogens do cause clots is that they pass through the liver and can cause some clotting factors to be produced, hormones through skin patches are directly absorbed into the bloodstream, and therefore can be given in far lower doses to be effective.”
This comes as a sigh of relief to the millions of women that experience painful menopause symptoms who abandoned the medication after a 2002 review which stated that hormone pills increased the risk of blood clots, as well as breast cancer and stroke. Patches and gels are already known to an affective means to treat symptoms such as hot flashes and sleep-interrupting night sweats that plague menopausal women.
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