Dr. Frederick Naftolin Discusses Hormone Therapy for Menopause
May 12, 2009
Once again, scientists are sharply divided over whether-and to what degree-hormone therapy should be rehabilitated. In the seven years since the WHI dropped its bombshell, the study's results have been endlessly analyzed, with detractors wondering how a single randomized controlled clinical trial, even one as mammoth as this, could have negated dozens of observational and epidemiological studies that showed estrogen reduced women's heart disease risk by as much as 50%. "A misunderstanding of the WHI results has turned off so many women and their physicians from hormone therapy," laments Frederick Naftolin, director of reproductive biology research and co-director of menopause medicine at New York University School of Medicine. "And there may be a price to pay. Women may die prematurely from heart disease and suffer unnecessarily from fractures or diabetes because they or their doctors didn't want to consider estrogen."
