Consultant, Women's Health

03/08/2026

Early Hormone Replacement Therapy Linked to Lower Osteoporosis Risk in Postmenopausal Women
Lara Salahi
March 04, 2026

Summarize This Article
Women who start hormone replacement therapy (HRT) within a year after menopause may have a lower risk of developing osteoporosis, according to research presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2026 (AAOS) annual meeting in New Orleans.

Researchers at Stony Brook University, New York, used the health records database TriNetX to analyze data from more than 137,000 postmenopausal women younger than 60 years. They compared women who started HRT within a year of a menopause diagnosis to matched peers who did not receive HRT.

“The early HRT group was defined as those women receiving HRT within the first year of diagnosis of menopause,” said study author James Barsi, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital in Stony Brook, New York.

At 3 years, researchers found no statistically significant difference in osteoporosis diagnoses between the early HRT and no-HRT groups (1.11% vs 1.15%; risk ratio [RR] 1.03; 95% CI, 0.95-1.13; P = .449).

Within 5 years, however, women who did not receive HRT had a significantly higher rate of osteoporosis (2.08% vs 1.91%; RR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.02-1.16; P = .010). At the final follow-up at 5 years, the gap widened further: 5.31% of women in the no-HRT group were diagnosed with osteoporosis compared with 4.39% in the early HRT group (RR 1.21; 95% CI, 1.16-1.26; P < .001).

Fracture outcomes followed a similar pattern. At 3 years, fracture rates did not significantly differ (1.94% vs 2.03%; RR, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.98-1.12; P = .171). By 5 years, fractures were modestly but significantly more common in women who did not receive HRT (3.55% vs 3.37%; RR, 1.05; 95% CI, 1.00-1.11; P = .034). Cumulative fracture rates were 7.06% in the no-HRT group compared with 6.21% in the early HRT group (RR, 1.14; 95% CI, 1.10-1.18; P < .001).

While short-term fracture risk did not differ, the longer-term findings suggest cumulative skeletal benefits, Barsi said.

“While we did not find a significant difference in fractures in the short term of 3 years, we did find differences in the medium to longer term,” said Barsi. “This would suggest that the effects of HRT seem to be more cumulative in nature and are protective in the long term.”

The study did not differentiate between estrogen-only vs combined estrogen-progestin therapy or whether the women took the therapies orally or transdermally.

“Unfortunately, the database did not get into the details of the type or route of hormone therapy received,” Barsi said.

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03/01/2026

Crowds of Iranian-Americans took to the streets of Westwood on Saturday to celebrate the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and the reported formation of a provisional government by opposition groups…

03/01/2026

MEDICALNEWSTODAY | Sunday Supplement
Cannabis leaf in ince
Women with less arterial plaque have heart attacks at the same rate as men

Your coronary artery scan may come back showing a modest level plaque and no immediate cause for alarm. For many women, this is where the conversation ends, but a new study of nearly 4,300 patients found that women experience major adverse cardiac events (from which they are more than twice as likely to die) at the same rate as men, despite consistently lower plaque readings.

The problem is that what counts as a “normal” scan may differ for men and women.

Women’s coronary arteries are smaller, so even modest plaque deposits take up a larger share of the vessel. When researchers measured plaque as a percentage of arterial cross-sectional area rather than raw volume, the gap in plaque levels between the sexes narrowed, but the risk of heart attack did not. Women’s cardiovascular events began climbing above a plaque burden of around 20%, while the risk threshold for men is nearer 28%.

“Less plaque does not necessarily mean low risk in women,” Kevin Shah, MD, a board certified cardiologist at MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute, told Medical News Today. “This study reinforces that plaque biology and distribution matter — not just total quantity.”

So, uniform plaque thresholds used in clinical practice may be quietly underestimating risk in women. Lead author of this new study, Jan Brendel, MD, noted that the findings don’t yet justify formal sex-specific cutoffs. Instead, they support the need for more research into the development of age- and sex-based percentiles similar to those already used in coronary calcium scoring.

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Axolotls can completely rebuild their thymus, a key immune organ

02/18/2026

And Trump just had the EPA rescind air quality standards..

A new Yale School of Public Health study shows that air pollution-related cardiovascular deaths are increasingly concentrated among traditionally underserved communities and driven by specific chemical components rather than overall pollution levels.

A new study from the Yale School of Public Health shows that air pollution-related cardiovascular deaths are increasingly concentrated among traditionally

02/18/2026

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02/18/2026

Starting menopausal HT after age 65 years may raise risk for cancer, heart-related events

February 16, 2026
3 min read
ByMichael Monostra
Fact checked byRichard Smith

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Key takeaways:
Women aged 65 years or older who initiate menopausal HT have higher risk for ischemic heart disease or heart attack than nonusers.
Menopausal HT was tied to increased risk for cancer across all age groups.

Women who begin using menopausal hormone therapy at age 65 years or older may have higher risk for cancer and cardiovascular events than those who never use HT, according to data published in Menopause.

In a retrospective cohort analysis of 83,147 women aged 50 years or older in the Clalit Health Services database in Israel, women initiating HT at aged 65 years or older had more than twice as high of a risk for developing cancer or for cerebrovascular accident as women who did not use HT. Alon Carney, MD, family physician at Clalit Health Services and clinical instructor in the department of family medicine and Siaal Research Center for Family Practice and Primary Care, Haim Doron Division of Community Health, faculty of health sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, said these findings are important due to the number of older women who are being prescribed HT.