NIH to host conference on the state of HRT science: should WHI findings be extrapolated? (In Wake of Landmark Trial).

The National Institutes of Health will hold a public meeting next month to assess the "state of the science" of hormone replacement therapy.

The NIH Scientific Conference on Hormone Replacement Therapy comes in the wake of recently publicized findings from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) suggesting that long-term use of the combination hormone replacement therapy (HRT) product Prempro is associated with more health risks than benefits.

The goal of the conference is to provide a forum for physicians, researchers, and others to address the confusion spawned by findings from the WHI and other recent studies and to identify research needs, an NIH spokeswoman said. While the use of Prempro is expected to be limited mainly to short-term treatment of menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, for which the drug is approved, the question plaguing women and health care professionals is whether the findings can or should be extrapolated to the many other combination HRT products on the market.

"We at least need to summarize the current facts so that we can identify the crucial open questions," said Dr. Wulf Utian, executive director of the North American Menopause Society. Dr. Utian, who has been invited to participate in the NIH conference, praised the effort to bring some level of order to what he says has become chaos in the medical community since the WHI findings were reported.

He likened the publicity ...