We unequivocally support the use of menopausal hormone therapy to mitigate menopause symptoms and prevent disease for a variety of patients. Let’s review the facts of the case. THIS IS NOT FAKE NEWS!

When our institutions fail us, it’s time to openly and directly say so. No, this is not a political rant. I’m talking about the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF), a well-meaning, highly educated group of 12 so-called experts (no endocrinologists, no reproductive endocrinologists, and no menopausal specialists), consisting of two pediatricians, a PhD specialist in health management and public policy, four internists, four family physicians, and our token Ob/Gyn (who isn’t a menopause or hormone therapy expert). Yes, this is the same group (some different players) who recommended every-other-year mammography — and you may remember the backlash and public outcry over that suggestion. (FYI, the major organizations in women’s healthcare didn’t accept that recommendation.)

Well, this group is at it again, this time over postmenopausal hormone therapy. Last month (December 2017), the group gave a “D” recommendation for the use of postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy for disease prevention in both naturally menopausal women and women who have had a hysterectomy. A “D” recommendation means: recommends against the use of combined estrogen and progestin (in women with a uterus) or estrogen alone (in women who had a hysterectomy) for the primary prevention of chronic conditions in postmenopausal women. You can read their recommendations for yourself.

So, what happened? First, let’s be clear. Experts looking at the same scientific information can disagree on its meaning. But that’s not what happened here. I know this because a real group of menopause and hormone therapy experts replied to the draft recommendations of the USPSTF, attempting to explain the errors of their draft recommendations (see: Langer RD, Simon JA, Pines A, Lobo RA, Hodis HN, Pickar JH, Archer DF, Sarrel PM, Utian WH. Menopausal hormone therapy for primary prevention: Why the USPSTF is wrong. Menopause. 2017 Oct; 24 (10):1101-1112. doi: 10.1097/GME.0000000000000983., Or Langer RD, Simon JA, Pines A, Lobo RA, Hodis HN, Pickar JH, Archer DF, Sarrel PM, Utian WH. Menopausal hormone therapy for primary prevention: Why the USPSTF is wrong. Climacteric. 2017 Oct; 20(5): 402-413. doi: 10.1080/13697137.2017.1362156. Epub 2017 Aug. 14.).

These two publications are essentially the same. One was meant for the U.S. audience of menopause and hormone therapy experts, the other for the international menopause and hormone therapy audience. These same recommendations were sent to and received by the USPSTF during their comment period. Nothing from our suggestions was incorporated into the USPSTF documents. One conclusion could be that the USPSTF didn’t care, they had their minds made up, and no amount of scientific information was going to change their opinion. That’s not what happened, in my opinion.

The USPSTF opted to do two things to support their forgone conclusions:

1. They so severely limited the evidence they were willing to consider that they made their judgement based only on the evidence in support of their opinion
2. They made simplified judgments to apply to every menopausal woman as if they were all the same.

This first tactic is prime territory for every lawyer. You define the evidence in such a limiting way as to exclude all evidence not in support of your client. The USPSTF, by excluding so much of the scientific information available, was left with only a few important studies … the usual suspects, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) being so large and all encompassing, that it overwhelmed any analysis of the other studies considered.

The second tactic, treating all menopausal women as if they were the same, fits well into tactic 1, since the WHI Investigators initially reported on their study “overall” (Risks and benefits of estrogen plus progestin in healthy postmenopausal women: principal results From the Women’s Health Initiative randomized controlled trial. Rossouw JE, Anderson GL, Prentice RL, LaCroix AZ, Kooperberg C, Stefanick ML, Jackson RD, Beresford SA, Howard BV, Johnson KC, Kotchen JM, Ockene J; Writing Group for the Women’s Health Initiative Investigators. JAMA. 2002 Jul 17; 288(3): 321-33.), lumping together women aged 50 through 79 as if they were all the same. And that was 15 years ago (prehistoric in scientific years).

These two errors in judgment are elegantly summarized by David. L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP who published another paper showing that NOT taking estrogen therapy following a hysterectomy actually resulted in a minimum of 18,601 — and as many as 91,610 postmenopausal women — dying prematurely because of the avoidance of estrogen therapy (ET) over a 10-year span, starting in 2002. Prevention of death is what I would call the ultimate prevention of disease. (See: The mortality toll of estrogen avoidance: an analysis of excess deaths among hysterectomized women aged 50 to 59 years. Sarrel PM, Njike VY, Vinante V, Katz DL. Am J Public Health. 2013 Sep;103(9):1583-8. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301295. Epub 2013 Jul 18.)