ALMOST 60% of women involved in a new study stopped taking hormone replacement therapy after research raised fears it could significantly increase their risk of developing breast cancer.
Some 40% are still shunning the treatment used to relieve symptoms of the menopause and which helps to prevent osteoporosis, according to research published today.
The trend emerged a day after the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh said doctors should consider carefully whether to prescribe women HRT because of concerns about the link with breast cancer and heart problems.
Professor Bruno Muller-Oerlinghausen, of the German Commission on the Safety of Medicines, said evidence HRT caused thousands of deaths from breast cancer made it a ''national and international tragedy'' and compared it to the devastating drug Thalidomide.
Frances Griffiths, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Warwick, said the numbers of women turning their back on the treatment, which is used by 1.5 million in Britain, showed the dilemma patients were
facing.
She advised women to make the decision to take HRT jointly with health professionals and to review its use every one or two years instead of being locked in for five.
The investigation into whether women are still taking HRT was carried out across 23 general practices in New Zealand.
Researchers found 58% of women had abandoned the drug since a study into the combined oestrogen and progestogen treatment identified increased rates of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and blood clots, last year.
Of the 734 respondents, 423 had stopped taking the drug, 291 were still not taking it and 132 had restarted the treatment. Most of the women who returned to the therapy did so because the symptoms it had suppressed had come back.
Dr Beverly Lawton, author of the study which appears today in the British Medical Journal, said: ''After the publication of the results from the oestrogen plus progestogen trial there was a substantial change in HRT use among the women we surveyed.''
HRT involves taking the two main female hormones, oestrogen and progesterone, which, apart from preserving the womb lining, reduces hot flushes and osteoporosis, increases libido and can prevent depression and fatigue.
But although progesterone reduces tissue build up in the womb, reducing the chances of womb cancer, it increases breast tissue meaning more risk of breast cancer.
There has been an association between HRT and breast cancer for at least 20 years but only recent studies have begun to quantify the degree of risk.
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