Hormone Therapy and Cardiovascular Disease Risk: Dose, Route, Formulation

In the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study, 94,000 women aged 50 to 79 at recruitment from September 1994 to December 1998 completed annual questionnaires about their use of hormone therapy (HT). Occurrence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events (i.e., major coronary heart disease [CHD], stroke, or CVD mortality), was confirmed with medical record review. Now, investigators have analyzed data collected until August 2009 from 42,000 HT users (mean follow-up, 10.4 years). Among almost 30,000 women who used oral conjugated equine estrogens (CEE), 82% used the conventional dose (0.625 mg), 7% used a lower dose, and 11% used a higher dose. A total of 2187 women used transdermal estrogen, 3024 used oral estradiol, and 13,203 used any fo…