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Women's Health Initiative
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What is the Women's Health Initiative?
The Women's Health Initiative (WHI) is a long-term study of the risks and benefits of strategies that may reduce the occurrence of heart disease, breast and colorectal cancer, and bone fractures in postmenopausal women. More than 160,000 healthy postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 were enrolled as WHI participants between 1993 and 1998. One part of the WHI is a clinical trial designed to study the long-term effects of postmenopausal hormone therapy on heart disease, osteoporosis, and colorectal and breast cancer risk. The hormone trial has two parts: one part has been looking at the effects of estrogen plus a progestin (a form of the hormone progesterone) in 16,608 postmenopausal women who have a uterus (that is, women who have not had a hysterectomy); the other part is looking at the effects of estrogen alone in 10,739 women who have had a hysterectomy. For women with an intact uterus, a progestin is given together with estrogen because estrogen alone has been shown to increase the risk of endometrial cancer (cancer of the lining of the uterus).
In each part of the hormone trial, half of the women were randomly chosen to receive hormone pills, and the other half to receive placebo pills (inactive pills). Neither the study participants nor the researchers know who is taking hormones and who is taking a placebo. Medical studies with this design, known as randomized, controlled, double-blind clinical trials, are considered the "gold standard" for demonstrating a cause-and-effect connection between a particular treatment or behavior and a medical condition or result because they provide the most scientifically reliable information.
http://womens-natural-health.com
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