Stroke, heart attack risks are real.

• Position: Hormone Therapy

Post-menopausal women whose doctors prescribe hormone replacement therapy for severe hot flashes and other menopause symptoms may want to consider taking low doses of Food and Drug Administration-approved bioidentical forms of estrogen or getting their hormones via a transdermal patch, as an observational study shows bioidentical hormones in transdermal patches may be associated with a lower risk of heart attack, and FDA-approved products--not compounded hormones--may be associated with a slightly lower risk of stroke compared to synthetic hormones in pill form.

"If confirmed by future randomized trials, these findings may be significant because, for the past decade, many women who experienced severe menopause symptoms opted not to use hormone therapy because of the reported increased risk of stroke and heart attacks," says Chrisandra Shufelt, director of the Women's Hormone and Menopause Program at the Women's Heart Center in the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, Los Angeles, Calif.

Shufelt emphasizes that the study's findings...