MONDAY, March 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Hormone therapy is associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality in women treated with statins, according to a study published in the April issue of Menopause.
Ingegärd Anveden Berglind, M.D., Ph.D., from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues categorized all women (aged 40 to 74 years) living in Sweden who filled a first statin prescription between 2006 and 2007 as hormone therapy users or as nonusers. Using national health registries, comparisons were made regarding cardiovascular outcomes and all-cause mortality.
The researchers found that 40,958 statin users (7 percent hormone therapy users) were followed for a mean of four years. There were five cardiovascular deaths per 10,000 person-years among hormone therapy users, compared to 18 among nonusers (hazard ratio, 0.38). For all-cause mortality, the rates were 33 and 87, respectively (hazard ratio, 0.53). For cardiovascular events, no associations were seen. While the majority of women (70 percent) used statins as primary prevention, a similar pattern was found for both primary and secondary prevention.
"Although confounding factors, such as lifestyle and disease severity, might have influenced the results, hormone therapy does not seem to be detrimental to statin-treated women," the authors write.
The study was independently developed from a project sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry.
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