The use of hormone replacement therapy for treatment of menopausal symptoms has been linked to numerous health problems including an increased risk of breast cancer, heart attacks and strokes.
Now, kidney stones should be added to the list of potential side effects, concludes a study published in Archives of Internal Medicine.
The risk, though, needs to be kept in perspective. The researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center looked at data from more than 27,000 women who took part in two separate HRT trials, one lasting 7.1 years and the other 5.6 years. Over those time periods, a total of 335 cases of kidney stones were reported among women taking hormone therapy, compared with 284 cases in women who received placebos.