Do Statins Mitigate Risk for Venous Thromboembolism with Hormone Therapy?

Studies conducted >20 years ago showed that statins mitigated risk for venous thromboembolism (VTE) in postmenopausal women receiving hormone therapy (HT). To revisit this issue, researchers used U.S. claims data from 2007 to 2019 and conducted a case-control study comparing 20,000 women (mean age, 58) with VTE and 200,000 age-matched women without VTE. HT exposure included both estrogen alone and estrogen/progesterone, and both oral and nonoral preparations.

In adjusted analyses, the odds ratio for VTE was 1.53 for HT exposure alone compared with no exposure to HT or statin. When HT and statins were used together, VTE risk was lower — roughly midway between risk with HT use alone and risk with neither statin nor HT use.