Hi Sally -
I did read your post, and thank you for re-posting the info on the patch. But since you did not keep using it, and did not use the patch/norethindrone routine, our situations are a bit different.
I don't know if the WIH women were all sedentary - they were considered 'healthy' at the time.
These are some of my notes from the WIH 3-year follow up study (I never took CEE). However, as was pointed out - the estrogens prescribed for many of us are now completely different than what was used in WIH.
NOTES:
In the original study - 16 608 postmenopausal, predominantly healthy women with an intact uterus who were 50 through 79 years old at study entry received active treatment (8506) or placebo (8102
). Treatment consisted of 0.625 mg of Conjugated Equine Estrogens
, and 2.5 mg of Medroxyprogesterone Acetate.
Although designed …for 8 to 9 years, the trial was stopped at a mean 5.6 years of follow-up because of an increased risk of invasive breast cancer and the failure to demonstrate an overall health benefit.
A greater risk of malignancies occurred in the CEE plus MPA than in the placebo group (n = 281 vs n = 218)
More breast cancers were diagnosed in women who had been randomly assigned to receive CEE plus MPA vs placebo (n = 79 vs n = 60).Although there was a greater risk of invasive breast cancer in the CEE plus MPA group (79 vs 60), the difference in risk was not statistically significant.
All-cause mortality was somewhat higher in the CEE plus MPA than in the placebo group (n = 233 vs n = 196)
In this 3-year followup study - - 250 women had died of the CEE plus MPA group and 239 women of the placebo group. There were no statistically significant differences between the CEE plus MPA and placebo groups across any of the 19 variables examined. Follow-up during the postintervention phase was missing for 389 leaving 15 730 participants.
The rates of colorectal cancer did not differ significantly. Rates of endometrial cancer were lower in the CEE plus MPA group, but the difference was not statistically significant.
Although women in the CEE plus MPA group had a significantly lower risk of fractures during the intervention phase, differences by treatment group were greatly attenuated after the intervention (meaning: 3 years later, CVD risks and fracture benefits dissipated).
During the intervention phase all-cause mortality was almost identical in both arms of the trial. The annualized event rates for the outcome “all cancer” was higher during the postintervention follow-up for the CEE plus MPA group (1.56% per year) than the placebo group (1.26% per year).
Cancer-related deaths included 101 in the CEE plus MPA group vs 69 in the placebo group in the postintervention follow-up,
but only 27 deaths in the CEE plus MPA group and 16 deaths in the placebo group were associated with breast, colorectal, endometrial, or ovarian cancer (prespecified cancer outcomes). Thus, the "other-cancers" category accounted for a larger absolute number of deaths, but with a similar pattern of association. Among the other cancers, most were lung cancer events (33 in the CEE plus MPA group vs 15 in the placebo group).
As a result, after a mean follow-up of 2.4 years after the intervention, the overall assessment of health risks and benefits associated with CEE plus MPA continued to be weighted toward risk.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/...px?articleid=1108397