Postmenopausal hormone therapy in prior pre-eclamptic women: a nationwide cohort study in Finland.

OBJECTIVE: We compared the trends of hormone therapy (HT) use among women with and without a history of pre-eclampsia. METHODS: This national cohort study consisted of women with a pre-eclamptic pregnancy (n = 31,688) or a normotensive pregnancy (n = 91,726) (controls) during 1969-1993. The data on their use of HT during 1994-2019 were traced from the National Medicine Reimbursement Register. RESULTS: Both women with a history of pre-eclampsia and controls initiated HT at a mean age of 49.9 years. Cumulative HT™ use during the total follow-up did not differ between the groups (31.1% vs. 30.6%, p = 0.066). However, HT use in previously pre-eclamptic women was less common in 1994-2006 (20.2% vs. 22.4%, p < 0.001) and more common in 2007-2019 (22.1% vs. 21.1%, p < 0.001) than in controls. This trend was also seen in the annual changes of HT starters. Women with a history of pre-eclampsia used HT for a shorter time (6.3 vs. 7.1 years, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to controls, HT use in previously pre-eclamptic women increased during the last half of the follow-up. This may reflect the changes in the international recommendations, the increased awareness of pre-eclampsia-related cardiovascular risk later in life and the aim to diminish this risk with HT.

New evidence for cardiac benefit of postmenopausal hormone therapy.

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is still the most common killer of western women. Coronary arteries, expressing estrogen receptors, are a target for estrogen action. Prior to the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study, postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT) was widely advocated for primary prevention of CAD, but such use was criticized after the WHI publication. However, new data accumulated in the USA and in Europe indicate that the use of estradiol-based HT regimens does not endanger the heart, but rather, it significantly reduces the incidence of CAD events and mortality. This effect may be related to the presence of hot flushes before HT initiation, because they may indicate a greater responsiveness of the cardiovascular system to HT. To get maximal cardioprotective efficacy of HT, a woman should initiate HT as soon as symptoms occur, and preferably within the first 10 postmenopausal years. Recent guidelines for optimal use of HT recommend pauses of HT at 1-2-year intervals to see whether hot flushes and other symptoms still persist. However, new data question the safety of this policy, because acute withdrawals of estradiol from the circulation may predispose to potentially fatal CAD events. All these data support modernized guidelines for optimal HT use.