Perimenopausal and postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy*Part 2. Hormonal Regimens and Complementary and Alternative Therapies

Hispanic Women's Experience With “el Cambio de Vida”

“…Early evidence from observational studies demonstrated that the risk of CVD mortality was about 35% less in women who used long-term HRT (Grady et al, 1992). HRT also protected against osteoporosis (Lichtman, 1996a;Lichtman, 1996b), may prevent Alzheimer's disease (Morrison, Harris, Lundeen, & Spratt, 1998), and may promote better outcomes in diabetic patients (Dunne, 1997;Kaplan et al, 1998). At the same time, the ongoing controversy about the link between breast cancer and HRT has created confusion among menopausal women about the best course to follow to promote their health after menopause (Wysocki, Speroff, & Bush, 2000).…”

“…Most women are well informed by the media and are likely to discuss HRT with their health care provider or significant other (Griffiths, 1995). Johnson (1997) and others (Lichtman, 1996b;Kasper, Mulley, & Wennberg, 1992) have discussed the need for joint clinical decision making between providers and their clients regarding use of HRT. There is clearly a need to understand Hispanic women's experience of the menopausal transition and the factors that influence their decision making about the issue of HRT.…”

Estrogen receptor transcription and transactivation Basic aspects of estrogen action

“…Estrogens are claimed to be effective in the treatment of urge incontinence in postmenopausal women (see [54,55] and references cited therein). It has recently been shown that ERβ is highly expressed in the inner epithelial cell layer of the rat bladder and urethra [56,57], which may explain the beneficial effect of estrogens in urinary incontinence and suggest that patients with urinary incontinence might benefit from ERβ-selective agonist therapy.…”

“…There is compelling evidence that estrogens protect post-menopausal women from bone loss and the development of osteoporosis, maintaining a balance between bone resorption and bone formation [54,55,60,61,62,63]. As in other tissues, estrogens probably have both direct and indirect effects in maintaining a balanced bone metabolism.…”

“…Estrogen replacement therapy has a cardiovascular protective effect in postmenopausal women, significantly decreasing the risk of developing atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease [54,55,70,71,72,73,74]. …”