Women who have just stopped menopausal hormone therapy might have a small increased risk of bone fractures compared with those who never took these medications.
A review of women’s health records revealed an association between an initial rise in fracture risk and women who had used the medication for less than 5 years, researchers report July 23 in the Lancet Healthy Longevity. This suggests it could be important to track some women’s bone health in the years after stopping hormone therapy.
Hormone therapies are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a preventive treatment for bone weakening during menopause. A 2022 statement from the North American Menopause Society (now known as the Menopause Society) recommends their use to prevent fractures in women up to 60 years old or who are within 10 years of menopause, as long as there are no contraindications like a history of breast cancer.
But the new findings suggest that these treatments might also come with some risk to women’s bones once they stop taking the drugs.
Around 1 in 4 U.S. women over 65 are diagnosed with osteoporosis, a loss of bone density that makes bones weak and more likely to break. It is especially common after menopause, when estrogen production declines. Estrogen is “in skin, it’s in our brain, it’s in our bones,” says Yana Vinogradova, a medical statistician at the University of Nottingham in England. Its loss causes brittle bones, difficulty sleeping and other symptoms. “The whole body is affected,” she says
