RIYADH, 9 September — Women in Saudi Arabia are alarmed by the revelation that a hormone replacement regimen taken by them did them more harm than good.
The new medical revelation is met with puzzlement and disbelief by women and their doctors in the Kingdom, where this hormone replacement therapy is very common.
"This landmark scientific study has found that giving drugs, a combination of estrogen and progestin, commonly prescribed by doctors in Saudi Arabia, caused substantial increases in breast cancer, heart diseases, strokes and blood clots," said reliable pharmaceutical industry sources here yesterday, while quoting the study conducted by a team of senior researchers in the United States.
The study will adversely affect the marketing of a range of drugs sold with different brand names by over 5,000 pharmacies in the Kingdom alone. In the US, it has been established by the study that this hormone replacement regimen taken by over six million American women did more damage than relief and improvement.
Local doctors, however, suggest that "the best prevention for many post-menopause effects is to stick to the basics before menopause — eat right, drink milk, get plenty of exercise and have your cholesterol and blood pressure regularly checked. They advised that women in the Kingdom currently taking estrogen plus progestin should have a serious talk with their doctors on the issue.
Referring to the findings of the new study, the sources said that many of the 16,000 women in the study, supported by the US-based National Institute of Health, received letters telling them to stop the drugs. The study has been halted as the results are strong indicators to recommend clinicians to stop prescribing this combination for long-term use.
They said that "now the growing consensus seems to be that women should carefully consider whether they want to start these drugs at all. Those who take these pills for more than a few years should be aware of the risks, which are real". The news of this new study, which has raised concerns among women on a global level, was first published by The New York Times .
The new study is different from other research studies because it involved thousands of healthy women and had a control group, with half of the women taking placebo pills. In addition, it looked for evidence of disease like heart attacks and cancer rather than indirect indicators like cholesterol levels, which can be misleading.
The tale of estrogen therapy began in 1966, when an enthusiastic doctor, Robert Wilson, wrote a best selling book. He called it "Feminine Fever" and flew around the US promoting it, telling women and doctors alike that estrogen, the feminine hormone, could keep women young, healthy and attractive. Eventually, this led to the popularity of the therapy among women around the world.
