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In 2002, Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) investigators found combination hormone replacement therapy (HRT; estrogen plus progesterone) to be associated with increased risk for coronary heart disease (JW Cardiology Aug 23 2002). Now, researchers have conducted a secondary analysis of the WHI trials, combined, to determine whether HRT’s cardiovascular effects vary according to the timing of HRT initiation. The trials involved 27,347 postmenopausal women ages 50 to 79: 10,739 who had undergone a hysterectomy and had been randomized to receive estrogen or placebo, and 16,608 without hysterectomy who had been randomized to estrogen/progesterone or placebo.
Risks for CHD and for all-cause mortality were decreased, albeit nonsignificantly, in patie…