Sex hormone estrogen patches pose low stroke risk: Study

Women using patches containing sex hormone estrogen to treat menopausal symptoms have a reduced chance of developing stroke compared to higher doses of pills.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) using synthetic estrogen are currently used address some serious symptoms of menopause including hot flashes, sleep disturbances and a lack of energy.

Menopause can also make women more susceptible to heart disease, osteoporosis and some cancers.

A study conducted on British women showed that the risk of developing a stroke remained the same in women who did not use HRT and those who used estrogen patches to control symptoms of menopause.

Researchers studied the case reports of 15,700 women over 50 who had strokes and nearly 60,000 who had not from Britain’s national medical database.

Estrogen pills raised the risk of having a stroke by 25 percent to 30 percent and high-dose patches raised the risk by 88 percent.

However, in those women who had used low-dose transdermal patches to get their HRT, the percentage of stroke incidence remained almost the same  or slightly less than women who used no HRT.

7.7 percent of stroke patients had been given an estrogen prescription to treat some of the symptoms related to menopause the previous year of their stroke. And 6.9 percent of women who did not have a stroke received some form of sex hormone estrogen therapy, researchers from Canada found.

The risk of stroke was not increased with use of low estrogen dose patches compared with no use, whereas the risk was increased with high dose patches, the reserachers wrote.

Low doses of hormones through the skin bypasses the liver and may not be that harmful to the entire body, they noted.

HRT has been in controversy for quite some time now following a study by the Women’s Health Initiative suggesting that the hormone treatment increased risk of ovarian cancer, breast cancer, strokes and other health problems.

Women who prefer to choose the use of hormones to treat menopuase symptoms should take the lowest dose possible for the shortest possible time, experts alert.