Women who develop lung cancer while undergoing hormone replacement therapy may be at a greater risk for death from the disease.

The Women’s Health Initiative was a federal study that studied the effects of combined hormone replacement therapy (pills containing estrogen and progestin) on almost 17,000 women. The study halted abruptly in 2002 when researchers noticed higher cancer rates in women taking the test pills and women on the fake pills.

Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center analyzed the results of this study and found that women taking the estrogen-progestin pills when they developed non-small cell lung cancer had twice the mortality rate of female lung cancer victims who were not taking hormone replacement pills at the time of their diagnosis.

However, Chlebowski’s findings are not definitive. Hormone replacement therapy has changed a lot in the few years since the study was conducted. For example, women in the study were usually in their early 60s when they started taking the estrogen-progestin pills and took them for more than 5 years. Now, most women start hormone replacement therapy in their early 50s and take the pills for only 2 years. Because of this, the risks Chlebowski identified may no longer be applicable.

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