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September 5, 2002

Media contacts: Paula Detwiller (619) 543-6163

UCSD Women's Health Initiative Leader to Give Free Lecture
on Hormone Replacement Therapy

Menopausal women across America wondered, "What should we do now?" when scientists recently halted a long-term study of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) citing possible health risks.

The leader of the San Diego component of this nationwide study, Robert D. Langer, M.D., M.P.H., will address that question and others in a free public lecture Tuesday, September 17 entitled "Does the Emperor Have New Clothes? Hormone Replacement Therapy in Light of Recent Findings in the Women's Health Initiative." The lecture will run from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Mandeville Auditorium on the UCSD campus in La Jolla.

Langer, a professor of family and preventive medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine, is principal investigator of the San Diego portion of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) -- a long-term national health study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health that focuses on strategies for preventing heart disease, breast and colorectal cancer and osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. A total of 5600 San Diego-area women are participating in five separate studies that are part of the WHI; UCSD is the third-largest study site out of 40 sites in the U.S.

In a widely publicized decision in July, treatment was stopped early in one of the WHI studies because of mounting evidence that the HRT drug given to participants -- a combination of estrogen and progestin -- would not provide the long-term health benefits that were expected for most women. Instead, the study found slightly increased risks of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and pulmonary embolism. This was partially balanced by decreases in hip fractures and bowel cancer. Langer says the flurry of news reports following the halt of the study tended to "blow the risks out of proportion."

"We shouldn't overgeneralize," Langer said. "I want to help people understand what we've really learned, and to put these findings into the proper context."

Langer says few people realize that researchers are still monitoring the health of the women enrolled in the combined estrogen-progestin study, and will continue to follow the group until at least 2005. "We've stopped the hormone treatment for this part of the study, but there is still much to learn about age-related illnesses among these women. Illnesses like breast cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's disease take a long time to develop and we still want to understand how the hormones we tested might affect these conditions for some time after women stop taking this medication."

In addition to providing a "status report" on the estrogen-progestin study, Langer will discuss what, if any, hormone replacement therapy makes sense for menopausal women depending on their current health, lifestyle, personal and family history.

"I want to help women and healthcare professionals understand what they can do with the information we now have," Langer said.