Menopause and heart health: Why timing hormone therapy is key

Please see our privacy policy for more information.The details of this article have been emailed on your behalf.Click here to return to the Medical News Today home page.The older a person gets, the more likely they are to develop heart disease. However, the risk of the condition — which is the biggest killer of women in the United States — increases even more during menopause.Experts believe that this is due to a drop in the levels of estrogen, as this hormone helps the arteries function properly.Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is one way to treat the symptoms that this decline causes, but the fears surrounding this treatment have not subsided since decades-old research suggested a link to heart issues and cancer.The American Heart Association (AHA), for example, caution against using the therapy to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.A 2017 JAMA study found that women who took HRT tablets were no more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, cancer, or another cause within 18 years than women who did not take them. Pyle states, "We wanted to test the timing hypothesis: the idea that there's a window of opportunity for taking estrogen so that we could see if we could identify that window and determine how menopause impacted the response to estrogens."When they examined how the mice's hearts responded to the estrogen, the researchers noted small but significant variations that indicated molecular changes in this vital organ.According to Prof.