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 Health & Beauty | March 2005 
Panel Cites 'Information Gap' On Relieving Menopause
 Rita Rubin - USA TODAY
| | Risks vs. benefit has been a concern for menopausal symptom drugs. (Photo: Stephen Chernin / Getty Images) |
After listening to 1½ days' worth of presentations about treatments for hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms, an independent panel of scientists concluded Wednesday that there is insufficient evidence to wholeheartedly endorse any of them.
"We clearly have an enormous information gap for understanding the best treatments for women who are symptomatic," said Carol Mangione, who chaired a 12-member "state-of-the-science" panel convened by the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH-sponsored Women's Health Initiative, which compared postmenopausal hormones with placebo pills in more than 27,000 women, was designed primarily to see whether long-term therapy could protect women against cardiovascular disease. But women with moderate to severe menopause symptoms were discouraged from participating.
Though WHI researchers reported in July 2002 that the risks of estrogen plus progestin, sold as Prempro, did not outweigh its benefits in study participants, the findings provided relatively few answers for women dealing with menopausal symptoms.
"In the post-Women's Health Initiative era, there has been a lot of confusion about how to manage the symptoms of menopause," said Mangione, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mangione's panel called for a new study to fill the knowledge gaps about treating menopausal symptoms, which it identified as hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness and a possibility of sleep disturbances.
The study should compare the long-term risks and benefits of three to five years of treatment with low-dose hormone therapy, the panel said. Participants should represent a variety of ethnic groups and body sizes to determine the role of such factors in menopausal symptoms and treatment.
"These are very expensive studies to undertake," Mangione acknowledged. "At the same time, this is a condition that affects a lot of women in the United States."
Cynthia Pearson, executive director of the National Women's Health Network, praised the panel's push for more research. "Women can make very good decisions about their own health if they have very good information on which to base those decisions," Pearson said.
The full text of the panel's draft statement is available online at consensus.nih.gov. The final version of the statement will be available at the same Web address in about four weeks. |
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