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Injured by a Hormone Replacement Therapy drug?

Prempro (conjugated estrogens/medroxyprogesterone acetate), Premarin (conjugated estrogens), and Premphase (conjugated estrogens/medroxyprogesterone acetate) are hormone replacement therapy drugs (HRT) that are linked to: Lobular breast cancer, Ductal breast cancer, Coronary heart disease, Stroke, Blood clots/deep vein thrombosis/ pulmonary embolism, Ovarian cancer, Scleroderma and Lupus. Hormone Replacement Therapy drugs are used to treat symptoms of menopause such as hot flashes, night sweats, and vaginal dryness.

Between 20 percent and 50 percent of women in the Western world who are between the ages of 45 and 70 have taken or are now taking Hormone Replacement Therapy drugs. In the past, HRT drugs were prescribed to every woman who experienced unpleasant symptoms of menopause. They were even expected to decrease certain health risks. Chances are if you took HRT medications, you assumed that drug companies like Wyeth had tested the safety of the medications. You are not alone – thousands of women were led to believe that these drugs were not only safe, but that they provided health benefits.

On July 9, 2002, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed that it was abruptly halting the use of Wyeth’s Prempro in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study because of unacceptable risks associated with taking the drug. Letters were sent to study participants urging them to stop taking the drugs because they led to increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease and stroke.

The Women’s Health Initiative was a $700 million, eight year, publicly funded study of Hormone Replacement Therapy. It was intended to study the BENEFITS of hormone replacement and hoped to find that drugs like Prempro and Premarin helped in the prevention of heart disease, breast and colon cancer, and osteoporosis. Instead, the risks associated with these drugs outweighed any benefits found and led to the immediate halting of the study. The findings were so shocking that the study was stopped with almost three years left to go.

In August 2005, researchers at the United Nations concluded that combined estrogen-progestin birth control pills and HRT are carcinogenic and cancer-causing in humans.  Since the 2002 WHI study, HRT manufacturers have introduced low-hormone drugs; these newer drugs may lead consumers to believe that there are no longer health risks associated with the HRT drugs.