Menopausal hormone therapy does not affect the risk of dying, study shows
2015-03-06
(Press-News.org) San Diego, CA--Menopausal hormone therapy (HT) does not have a significant effect on death, according to a new review of the medical literature published over the past three decades. The results, which included studies with follow-up as long as 18 years, will be presented Friday at the Endocrine Society's 97th annual meeting in San Diego.
"At present, we do not have evidence that hormone therapy in postmenopausal women increases mortality or protects from death compared with women who never used hormones," said lead investigator Khalid Benkhadra, MD, a research fellow at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
The results, Benkhadra said, should allay concerns of some women with debilitating menopausal symptoms who have feared taking hormones.
Benkhadra and colleagues reached their conclusion after comprehensively searching several large databases of published medical literature from their earliest inception (1982 and later) through August 2013.
They conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis, or quantitative statistical analysis, of the medical literature using only studies of moderate to high-quality scientific evidence. The researchers included clinical trials of postmenopausal women in the analysis only if the studies lasted longer than six months, randomized patients to receive HT or either placebo (sham treatment) or no treatment. Women were age 50 or older in the 43 studies included in the analysis.
The investigators found no statistically significant relationship between HT use and all-cause mortality--death due to any reason--or death due to heart attack, breast cancer or stroke. There also was no significant association between HT use and death when they performed a subgroup analysis based on hormone type, estrogen alone or estrone plus progesterone, according to Benkhadra.
Benkhadra said their research could be used to clarify the indications for taking HT.
INFORMATION:
Founded in 1916, the Endocrine Society is the world's oldest, largest and most active organization devoted to research on hormones and the clinical practice of endocrinology. Today, the Endocrine Society's membership consists of over 18,000 scientists, physicians, educators, nurses and students in 122 countries. Society members represent all basic, applied and clinical interests in endocrinology. The Endocrine Society is based in Washington, DC. To learn more about the Society and the field of endocrinology, visit our site at http://www.endocrine.org. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/EndoMedia.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-03-06
In the absence of food, neurons that normally control appetite initiate complex, repetitive behaviors seen in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and anorexia nervosa, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers.
The findings are published in the March 5 online issue of the journal Cell.
Neural circuits are responsible for flexible goal-oriented behaviors. The Yale team investigated how a population of neurons in the hypothalamus that control food intake are also involved in other behaviors. Known as Agrp neurons, these cells also control repetitive, ...
2015-03-06
Even though the levels of two environmental pollutants have declined over the last 20 years, they may still have adverse effects on children's development, according to a new study by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. This is the largest study of environmental pollutants and infant growth to date.
Researchers investigated whether exposure to two persistent organic pollutants before and after birth was associated with rapid growth in infancy, a known risk factor for obesity in later life:
polychlorinated biphenyl 153 (PCB153), a chemical used extensively in ...
2015-03-06
The human brain can select relevant objects from a flood of information and edit out what is irrelevant. It also knows which parts belong to a whole. If, for example, we direct our attention to the doors of a house, the brain will preferentially process its windows, but not the neighboring houses. Psychologists from Goethe University Frankfurt have now discovered that this also happens when parts of the objects are merely maintained in our memory.
"Perception and memory have mainly been investigated separately until now", explains Benjamin Peters, doctoral researcher ...
2015-03-06
Inflammatory processes occur in the brain in conjunction with stroke and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Researchers from Lund University and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, in close cooperation with a group led by Professor José L. Venero at the University of Seville, have presented new findings about some of the 'key players' in inflammation. In the long term, these findings could lead to new treatments.
One of these key players is a receptor called TLR4. The receptor plays such an important role in the body's innate immune system ...
2015-03-06
Children under five living in sub-Saharan Africa are at greater risk than older children of developing a long-term parasitic disease, research suggests.
Infants experience significantly greater exposure to the parasitic worms that cause the chronic disease schistosomiasis, a study shows.
Under-fives are vulnerable because they spend time near rivers and lakes in which parasites that cause the disease live.
Previous studies missed pre-schoolers significant exposure to infected water in rivers close to family homes.
Researchers found that preschool-age children ...
2015-03-06
The UK needs to increase its investment in science and engineering research if it is to continue to be a successful nation. This is the overriding message coming from a major conference hosted this week by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
The conference, 'Science for a Successful Nation', drew high profile academics, industry and business representatives, and researchers together to examine how science and engineering can make the UK a healthy, prosperous, resilient and connected nation.
Professor Philip Nelson FREng, EPSRC's Chief Executive ...
2015-03-06
This news release is available in German. Are leaves and buds developing earlier in the spring? And do leaves stay on the trees longer in autumn? Do steppe ecosystems remaining green longer and are the savannas becoming drier and drier? In fact, over recent decades, the growing seasons have changed everywhere around the world. This was determined by a doctoral candidate at the Goethe University as part of an international collaboration based on satellite data. The results are expected to have consequences for agriculture, interactions between species, the functioning ...
2015-03-06
Infection with highly contagious noroviruses, while not usually fatal, can lead to a slew of unpleasant symptoms such as excessive vomiting and diarrhea. Current treatment options are limited to rehydration of the patient. "Additionally, noroviruses come in a variety of constantly evolving strains. This makes the development of an effective vaccine to protect against infection, as well as antiviral therapy to combat already-existing infections, particularly challenging", says Dr. Grant Hansman, a virologist who leads the CHS Research Group on Noroviruses at the German Cancer ...
2015-03-06
In the race to miniaturize electronic components, researchers are challenged with a major problem: the smaller or the faster your device, the more challenging it is to cool it down. One solution to improve the cooling is to use materials with very high thermal conductivity, such as graphene, to quickly dissipate heat and thereby cool down the circuits.
At the moment, however, potential applications are facing a fundamental problem: how does heat propagate inside these sheets of materials that are no more than a few atoms thick?
In a study published in Nature Communications, ...
2015-03-06
Amsterdam, March 9, 2015 -Drug testing is most commonly performed using urine samples. The methodology and regulations for reliable urine testing are well developed and can be considered the current gold standard for drug testing. However, one problem with urine testing is related to the methodology of sample collection, often perceived as inconvenient and privacy-overriding by those undergoing the test. As such, a group of researchers from the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have worked on developing a more donor-friendly alternative ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Menopausal hormone therapy does not affect the risk of dying, study shows
