News flash or hot flash? A new position statement from the North American Menopause Society suggests the medications aren’t as risky for women between 45 and 55 years old, compared with older women.

“The prevalence of those major problems - heart attack, stroke and breast cancer - is lower in this population than in older women,” says Wulf Utian, the non-profit’s executive director. “These drugs are safer than the popular perception.”

That perception was shaped by a federally-funded study released in 2002 that found HRT was linked to those three ailments. The average age, however, was 63, which helps explain the difference, says Utian. Meanwhile, sales of such treatments as Wyeth’s Prempro subsequently plunged and the findings figure prominently in thousands of lawsuits filed against the drugmaker.

Utian acknowledged that NAMS accepts grants from drugmakers and that many of the panel members who spent nine months reviewing data serve as consultants to the pharmaceutical industry. However, he added that industry funds weren’t used to pay for the position paper.

“Women should still speak with their doctors. We’re not making recommendations. We’re not trying to boost the pharmaceutical industry,” he said. “We’ve broken our backs to be as scrupulously transparent as possible.”

[tags]HRT, NAMS, Prempro, Wyeth[/tags]