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Use plummeted after the Women’s Health Initiative released its results.

The long-standing beliefs have been that symptoms subside a few years after women have their last periods and that taking hormones might help women avoid symptoms, although strong scientific evidence about the duration has been lacking, Ockene said.

Researchers, she said, "would have assumed that 5½ years, which is the average length in this study, would have been enough time to see them not return." Smith, of Fitchburg, Mass., said she started having menopausal symptoms at age 49, with hot flashes so severe that they steamed up car windows.

They disappeared during the study.

"Within a month they were back again.

Not quite so bad, but I still wake up at night with a good one," Smith, 73, said recently.

The original study involved 16,600 women ages 50 to 79 who were given Smith was among 8,405 WHI participants surveyed by mail eight to 10 months after the study was halted.

Overall, 21 percent of Ockene said those results suggest that many women on fake pills might have gone through natural menopause during the study but that for th...

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