Updates

A recent paper, published by Xue and colleagues in the [i]Archives of Internal Medicine[/i], looked at the association between active or passive smoking and breast cancer risk among the Nurses’ Health Study cohort [1]. The Nurses’ Health Study is a prospective cohort study of 111,140 participants followed up from 1976 to 2006 for active smoking… Read More

LaCroix and colleagues [1] recently reported health outcomes after stopping therapy among postmenopausal women randomized to conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) in the estrogen-only arm of the Women’s Health Initiative. A total of 7645 women (78% of the original cohort) gave consent to be included in this follow-up over a mean duration of 10.7 years. Post-intervention… Read More

There has been a continuous interest in the consequences of excessive weight on health outcomes, mainly because of the fact that the world’s population is becoming heavier. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 1 billion people are overweight, with 300 million meeting the criteria for obesity. A recent review on this issue [1]… Read More

A recently published randomized, controlled trial [1] has examined the effects of a topical vaginal pH-balanced gel on symptoms of atrophic vaginitis amongst women who have been treated for breast cancer. Ninety-eight women were enrolled in the study and 86 completed the trial. All participants were postmenopausal prior to the diagnosis of their breast cancer.… Read More

Fung and colleagues have recently reported on a cross-sectional study, followed by a prospective analysis, on the effect of continuous postmenopausal estrogen therapy over a period of 10 years on blood pressure, microalbuminuria and renal function [1]. A total of 1044 postmenopausal women (mean age 72 years) were evaluated cross-sectionally between 1992 and 1996. These… Read More

In a recently published study, Casson and colleagues evaluated endogenous serum androgens and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) in 29 normal, non-obese, naturally occurring postmenopausal women whose ages ranged from 52 to 70 years [1]. Correlations were then evaluated between serum androgens and SHBG and insulin sensitivity, whole-body fat and lean body mass, visceral/abdominal fat… Read More

Bea and colleagues [1] have recently reported on results from a Women’s Health Initiative (WHI)-based sub-study that investigated possible effects of hormone therapy (HT) on lean mass, incidence of falls and fractures. The mean age at baseline was 63 years, and the mean time since menopause ranged from 13.3 to 22.5 years. Women were randomly… Read More

The aim of this recent analysis from the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS) was to examine whether significant depressive symptoms in postmenopausal women increase the risk of subsequent mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and probable dementia [1]. Participants were 6376 postmenopausal women without cognitive impairment aged 65–79 years at baseline (mean 70 years), who were… Read More

Coincident with the December publication of data from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Dietary Modification Trial [1], which failed to show decreased risk of breast cancer, colon cancer or coronary heart disease in a controlled trial of 48,835 postmenopausal women (50–79 years old) who lowered their fat intake by 7.8% and increased their carbohydrate intake… Read More

Recently, a study was published in the [i]American Journal of Clinical Nutrition[/i] [1] on the use of multivitamins and risk of myocardial infarction. The study included 31,671 women from Sweden with no history of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and 2262 women with a history of CVD, aged 49–83 years. Women completed a self-administered questionnaire in 1997… Read More