FRIDAY, Aug. 13, 2010 (HealthDay News) -- Taking estrogen doesn't increase the risk of developing or dying from lung cancer among postmenopausal women who've had a hysterectomy, a new study has found.
Previous research about the effects of combined estrogen plus progestin therapy produced conflicting results and no studies have clarified the influence of the use of estrogen alone, the authors of the new study noted.
The researchers, Dr. Rowan T. Chlebowski, of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, and colleagues analyzed data from 10,739 women, aged 50 to 79, who had undergone a hysterectomy and who had been randomly selected to take estrogen or a placebo as part of the Women's Health Initiative trial.
There were 34 lung cancer deaths among women in the estrogen group, compared with 33 such deaths in the placebo group, according to the report published online Aug. 13 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The findings show that the use of estrogen alone was not associated with lung cancer incidence or death, Chlebowski's team stated in a news release from the journal's publisher.
More information
The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about estrogen.
