More controversy over HRT - first it is bad for you, now it is good for you.

For millions of women, menopause can be miserable. Symptoms include hot flushes, mood swings and brittle bones. Hormone Replacement Therapy or HRT can prevent that, and give older women a new lease of life. But five years ago a high profile study from America linked HRT to heart disease, strokes and breast cancer. Patients came off the medication in droves only to be told now that the US report was wrong.

So what are we to believe? Professor John Studd, the chairman of the British Menopause Society tells us the latest thinking.

 

 

 

"The Million Women study has been criticised because of its eccentric data collection, resulting five years ago in a considerable overestimation of breast cancer.

"Now the investigators have once again issued press statements sensationalising their data in the press before the scientific community has had a chance to analyse it. Pre-publication press conferences are a device being used more and more frequently and should be stopped.

"This happened with the WHI study five years ago, resulting in 40 per cent of women discontinuing HRT. Now they have published a correction revealing what we all knew, that there is a reduction in MIs. But this was a shameful misuse of the media.

 

"Similarly, the MW study has again sensationalised their somewhat incomprehensible results of ovarian cancer, extrapolating their five year data to 13 year data to produce a more sensational message for the press. Their science may be suspect but their manipulation of the media is brilliant.

 

"It is biologically hard to understand how oestrogen can increase ovarian cancer except for possibly the rare endometrioid cancer. It is all the more strange because there is now doubt that the oral contraceptive pill reduces lifetime incidence of ovarian cancer by 50 per cent. It is hard to understand why virtually the same hormones in lower doses can produce ovarian cancer in older women.

 

"It is confusing to patients and their doctors to understand what the truth is at the moment. Menopausologists are quite clear that HRT given to women younger than 60 reduces heart attacks, colon cancer, osteoporosis of the hip and spine, has no effect on stroke and possibly has a slight increase in breast cancer, of a less advanced grade and better prognosis.

 

"I think that women with appropriate vasomotor symptoms, hormone-responsive depression and low bone density, should not be discouraged from using HRT.

 

"Sadly, many GPs have stopped prescribing HRT based on now discredited WHI data."

 

What do you get when you cross a 30-year-old Palestinian virgin with stand-up comedy?

Maysoon Zaid says she NEEDS a sense of humour. She is a woman, she's Muslim, she has cerebral palsy, and she is a Palestinian living in New York. She is also very funny, and considered one of the most charismatic and successful young comedians of her generation.

Not only that, but in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in America she launched the Arab American Comedy Festival. Her fans say she is one of the funniest women on stage today. Her mother says she wishes her daughter wouldn't swear so much.