Prempro

“The FDA did not intend for these drugs to be marked for long term use," Meadows said.

"They were intended only for severe menopausal symptoms." Jere Beasley, a partner in Beasley Allen Attorneys at Law of Birmingham, said these drugs have life-threatening risks, like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, heart attacks, strokes and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Beasley said these pharmaceutical companies were aware of the risks, and promoted a dangerously high dosage and long-term usage without warning the customer of the significant risks associated with the prescription.

Melissa Prickett, another partner with Beasley Allen, said Graham began taking the medication in 1996 and stopped taking it in the summer of 2003, after learning she had developed breast cancer.

Biopsies with hormone receptors showed the tumor was caused by the hormone therapy medication.

"Graham's treatment included a lumpectomy to remove the tumor and seven weeks of radiation," Prickett said.

Meadows said these medications were first used in the 1960s and 1970s, and there was no testing done then to look for the possibility of breast cancer.

He added that in 2002, doctors began to realize the dangerous side effects of the hormone therapy medication.

Meadows said after this sales began to drop, and mo...

Some may have been advised to resume the hormone therapy, perhaps at a lower dose.

Most are still uncertain about what they should do to feel better, yet still be as safe as possible from the adverse events.

Q: What is the difference between bioidentical hormone replacement and the prescription hormone replacement?

A: First let me explain that the word bioidentical is key here.

Some prescription estrogen and progestin products are not identical to the hormones that occur naturally in the body.

For example, Premarin, the most widely used estrogen replacement for decades, is from the horse species, and is not identical to human estrogen.

The body will process it as best it can, but some by-products will be formed that are foreign to human metabolism.

There is some scientific evidence that these by-products may contribute to the increased risks associated with taking horse estrogen.

Another example is that Provera is not identical to human progesterone.

Provera is a synthetic progestin, which means it is similar to human progesterone in some ways, but it is not identical, and again, the body can only do its best to metabolize it.

The synthetic progestins, like bioiden...

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

The long-standing belief has been that symptoms subside a few years after women have their last period 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.” Symptoms postponed?

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 aged 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, whil...