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Hormone Replacement Drugs
For many years, menopausal women found relief from hot flashes and night sweats in readily-prescribed hormone replacement therapy medications. The medical community believed not only that long-term hormone replacement drugs safely alleviated the irritating effects of menopause, but that these drugs offered menopausal women the added benefit of protection against osteoporosis, heart disease, and even memory loss.
The bubble was burst when the landmark Women’s Health Initiative Study at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was halted because hormone replacement medications were causing adverse effects among many participants. The eight-year $700 million study indicated that women taking these drugs were vulnerable to significant health risks:
- 60% increased risk of ovarian cancer
- 41% increased risk of strokes
- 29% increased risk of heart attacks
- 26% increased risk of certain types of breast cancer
- 22% increased risk of cardiovascular disease
Since the WHI study, most women stopped taking combination hormone replacement therapy, and those with significantly debilitative menopause symptoms were steered by physicians to safer therapy forms. Nonetheless, thousands of women were left with devastating consequences, including invasive breast cancer and ovarian cancer, from years of ingesting popular drugs such as Prempro, Premphase, Provera, medroxyprogesterone (MPA), and Premarin. Many of these women are seeking justice by filing more than 10,000 lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that made and marketed hormone replacement therapy products.
The attorneys at Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley have specific experience investigating and litigating claims in state and federal courts in Florida and other parts of the country based on invasive breast cancer and ovarian cancer linked with combination hormone replacement therapy containing synthetic estrogen and progesterone. The firm also has experience conducting the discovery necessary to prove the liability of Wyeth, Pfizer, Pharmacia, Upjohn, Solvay, Bristol Myers, and other HRT drug manufacturers.
Women who ingested HRT drugs, especially those who took the drugs for more than five years, have a substantially increased risk of developing invasive breast cancer. This is because the hormones promote the growth of cancerous tumors and also increase breast density, which makes mammograms less sensitive in locating tumors. The fact that Prempro and other combination hormone therapy drugs promote the growth of hormone-fed tumors should not be surprising to the manufacturers: Premarin, Wyeth’s popular estrogen product derived from pregnant horse urine, was associated with an outbreak of hormone-fed endometrial cancers more than thirty years ago.
Tragically, for many, many years, Wyeth and other manufacturers succeeded in duping consumers and physicians into believing that combination hormone replacement therapy drugs were safe and effective. For decades, the manufacturers convinced many physicians that they would be committing malpractice if they did not immediately place their menopausal patients on HRT drugs - and keep them on these medications for life.
Today, now that the safety data is finally coming to light, physicians are warned to prescribe HRT drugs only to women who have the most severe symptoms and have failed other non-hormone therapies as well as bioidentical hormones. Physicians are advised that such patients should take the drugs for the shortest time period possible, given that the once-touted long-term benefits are either non-existent or not substantial enough to outweigh the now well-documented cancer and cardiovascular risks.
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with hormone-positive invasive breast cancer or ovarian cancer, our law firm has the experience to evaluate and litigate your potential claim, and the resources to help you seek justice. Please fill out our contact form, or call us to learn more and arrange for a confidential free consultation.
- FDA - Question and answers for estrogen and estrogen with progestin therapies for postmenopausal women (updated)
- Women's Health Initiative - New information RE: estrogen and progestin
- National Institutes of Health - WHI Study finds no heart disease benefit - increased stroke risk with estrogen alone
- Women's Health Initiative - Questions and answers about the estrogen alone study
