HRT study on heart disease 'tragically flawed'

Research that appeared to expose the risks of hormone replacement therapy was seriously flawed.

The results of the Women's Health Initiative study indicated that taking HRT increased the chances of heart disease and breast cancer.

But a new report says the women recruited for the study were in their sixties and early seventies so many had heart problems before they started taking the treatment. These results were wrongly used to assess the impact of HRT on younger women.

Millions of women taking HRT to relieve the unpleasant effects of the menopause and prevent brittle bone disease stopped the treatment.

Dr Frederick Naftolin of Yale University, the author of the new study, said: "It is a very sad outcome from a very important survey.

"But this was a study on ageing women who very likely already had some level of cardiovascular disease when they started. People interpreted them as having implications for younger women - that was the real tragedy."

He told The Daily Telegraph: "Women who would have been on hormones were frightened away from starting. Women who were older and had been doing well, stopped being protected."

The most common form of HRT combines the hormones oestrogen and progestogen. Last year the largest ever study of HRT and breast cancer, by Cancer Research, found the single pill moderately increases the chances of breast cancer but the combined pill doubles the risk.