Jennifer Hays, PhD, director for the Center for Women's Health at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, led the study examining health-related quality of life among women in the WHI study. Dr. Hays and her colleagues' results were published in the May 8th issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. To the surprise of many women and doctors, including the researchers themselves, they found that estrogen plus protestin did not have a clinically meaningful effect on health-related quality of life. Below, Dr. Hays discusses these controversial findings.
Why did you decide to examine quality of life in the Women's Health Initiative?
This quality of life study was planned from the beginning of the WHI as part of our effort to understand the effects of long-term hormone use on 16,608 women between the ages of 50 and 79. Except for one part of the study looking at women who had had hysterectomies and were taking estrogen alone, the WHI was terminated early. The overall health risks outweighed the health benefits in the women taking estrogen plus progestin, compared to the women in that group who were on placebo. So the next question was, "How did these women fare in terms of quality of life?" That data had been collected when they went into the study. Data were gathered one year later on everyone and, after three years, on 1,511 of the participants.
