Question

Hormone therapies offer many benefits and risks, but they may sometimes have side effects. Choose one form of therapy (for example; progestin, estrogen, a combined therapy, systemic, or local therapy). Discuss the benefits, risks, and side effects for the therapy you chose.

Answer 1

Hormone therapies or hormone replacement therapies are mainly used to replace the decreased levels of hormones in the body. It is commonly used in women after menopause to reduce the symptoms.

The estrogen therapy

Estrogen therapy is known to be the highly effective and safe to reduce post menopausal symptoms. Although, all hormone therapies has its risk and side effects if used for a long period of time.

The benefits of estrogen therapy are

• Relieves menopause symptoms ; As the estrogen levels decrease during menopause, it cause hot flashes, excessive sweating, chills, mood changes and vaginal dryness. Estrogen replacement can help to ease the symptoms.
• Improves vaginal health ; vulvar atrophy which can leads to soreness, dryness of vaginal lining and leads to atrophic vaginitis.
• Prevent infections ; Due to the lack of vaginal lactobacilli in menopause, it increase the vaginal pH level and leads to colonization of the E.coli from rectum and cause urinary tract infection. estrohen replacement can reduce chance of UTI.
• Helps ovary issues ; Replacement of estrogen can help women with decreased ovarian function, or who has surgically removed ovaries to help with premature menopausal symptoms.
• Protect bone ; Estrogen helps in bone remodeling, maintain bone formation and reduce bone resorption which helps to prevent osteoarthritis.

The side effects of estrogen therapy are

The side effects depends upon the route of administration of estrogen. It can be local and systemic effects.Nausea, headache, weight gain, vaginal discharge, leg cramping, bloating, vaginal spotting and breast tenderness is common side effects stomach problems and increased cholesterol levels are also seen if the medicine take orally. It can cause skin irritation if used as patches over the skin.

The risk associated with estrogen therapy are

• Deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism; estrogen therapy can form blood clots which can leads to life threatening conditions.
• Heart attack ans stroke ; formation of blood clots and rise in cholesterol level by estrogen can leads to cardiac problems and stroke.
• Cancer ; Estrogen therapy can cause increased risk of endometrial cancer, ovarian cancer and breast cancer.