Med Student Medical News about Hormone Replacement Therapy Postmenopause Mortality

Become a Member Today!
Register

Most Viewed Abstracts

1. Report Shows Shift in Starting Salaries for Physicians

2. Recommendations on the use of 18F-FDG PET in oncology

3. Use of Antiemetic Agents in Acute Gastroenteritis

4. Gene expression signatures, clinicopathological features, and individualized therapy in breast cancer

5. AHA Guidelines on Cardiac CT for Assessing Coronary Artery Disease

Your Article Summary

See Latest Articles

(Click the title below to leave the MDLinx Network and go to the Journal's Website)

Bayesian Meta-analysis of Hormone Therapy and Mortality in Younger Postmenopausal Women
American Journal of Medicine, 10/27/09

Salpeter SR et al. – The synthesis of data using Bayesian meta–analysis indicates a reduction in mortality in younger postmenopausal women taking hormone therapy compared with no treatment. This finding should be interpreted taking into account the potential benefits and harms of hormone therapy.

Methods

A comprehensive search from 1966 through January 2008 identified randomized controlled trials of at least 6 month's duration that evaluated hormone therapy in women with mean age <60 years and reported at least one death, and prospective observational cohort studies that evaluated the relative risk of mortality associated with hormone therapy after adjustment for confounding variables.

Results

The results were synthesized using a hierarchical random–effects Bayesian meta–analysis.
The pooled results from 19 randomized trials, with 16,000 women (mean age 55 years) followed for 83,000 patient–years, showed a mortality relative risk of 0.73 (95% credible interval 0.52–0.96).
When data from 8 observational studies were added to the analysis, the resultant relative risk was 0.72 (credible interval 0.62–0.82).
The posterior probability that hormone therapy reduces total mortality in younger women is almost 1.