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Researches from the the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study at University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill offer new evidence that the combined hormone therapy significantly boosts the risks of dementia and strokes in postmenopausal women and does not significantly improve global cognitive functioning. The study showed roughly a doubling of dementia among those in the treatment group, involving 4,532 women, while the new stroke investigation involved 16,608. They found estrogen-plus-progestin therapy boosted the risk of strokes caused by clots but not by bleeding. They also found a 44 percent increase in ischemic stroke but no evidence of increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke.
The numbers are impressive but according to Medpundit's analysis "perspective is everything... while the number of women who developed symptoms of dementia while on hormones was twice the number of those on a placebo, the numbers were small -- 45 women in 10,000 on the hormones compared to 22 out of the 10,000 on a placebo. So, the incidence of Alzheimer’s in hormone replacement users was 0.0045%. The incidence in non-users, 0.0022%. Hardly a dramatic difference. Yet, the authors framed the difference in much more dramatic terms in their abstract."
Perspective is interesting, if not everything.
The randomized controlled study was published in the current JAMA. Here is a news release from the University of North Carolina
10:14:32 PM 
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