Drop in HRT use may have cut heart attack rate: Study

However, no decrease in the rate of strokes was observed, said the study researchers.

HRT is a medical treatment used for to curing the diminishing circulation of estrogen and progesterone hormonesdefine in menopausal, premenopausal and postmenopausal conditions.

The treatment involves the use of one or more medications designed to artificially boost hormone levels.

Till 2002, the therapy was widely used by women to lessen the effects of menopause symptoms. But after researchers published a study that claimed that the therapy could drastically shoot up the risk of heart attack, a significant number of women stopped undergoing the therapy.

As per researchers, the use of HRT among women in the age group of 50-69 declined from more than 30 percent to less than 15 percent.

For the current study, the researchers scrutinized the US death records, hospital discharge data and national surveys of medication usage between 1990 and 2005 for women in the age group of 40-79.

The evaluation of the data revealed that there was a decrease in heart attack incidences but no decline was noticed in the number of hospitalizations or deaths from stroke.

In a new release, lead author of the study Dr Kanaka Shetty of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, said, "We were surprised that HRT had such divergent effects on stroke and acute myocardial infarctiondefine (heart attack) in the overall population."

Dr Nieca Goldberg, a cardiologist at Total Heart Care in New York City, maintained that factors other than reduced use of HRT might be responsible for the decrease in heart attacks among American women. Interestingly, the reduction in the use of HRT coincided with the American Heart Association's and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's women and heart disease awareness campaigns, she added.

Goldberg further said, "The lower rate of heart attacks may be due to better screening for heart disease risk factors and better awareness of women's heart attack symptoms by physicians…It's premature to attribute the decline in heart attack rates to the decline in hormone therapy."

The study findings were published in the May issue of the journal Medical Care.