A French study finds that some of the most serious side effects of taking hormones for menopause can be cut sharply by ingesting them in non-pill form.
The study postulates that using patches or other forms of delivery through the skin reduces the risk of blood clots to almost zero.
The findings have been based on tracing the medical history of 881 women. They concluded that that those taking estrogen or other hormones as pills were four times as likely to suffer from blood clots, while those getting the hormone through the skin were no more likely to get blood clots.
Life-threatening blood clots, called venous thromboembolisms, are a somewhat rare but dangerous side effect of oral hormone therapies.
However, the patch carries its own set of side effects, including rash and some people have a hard time getting it to stay on. It also doesn’t work quite as well for some women in terms of symptom relief.
Thus, women are still being recruited in the study to learn about benefit and risk, with particular focus on atherosclerosis in the heart, neck and head.
So in order to reach a particular conclusion, the scholars are looking for women between 42 to 58 years of age, who had their last period at least six months ago, but not more than three years ago. Women who have had a hysterectomy or who have diabetes do not qualify for the study, nor do those with a significant cholesterol problem.
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