“Women Are Different”

… is the gist of this overview of the interesting but frustrating 20-year-long Women’s Health Initiative, which in 1991 set out to study the effects of diet and hormone treatment on heart disease, breast cancer, stroke, and other diseases. Here’s a summary of the results in timeline format, and then here’s a summary of the results in the form of a single reader’s comment: “I have lost all confidence in the studies dealing with female hormone replacement.”

There are lessons to be learned from the 20 years of research, however: “One of the most valuable lessons may be that not all postmenopausal women are medically the same,” and “The most compelling lesson of the research should be that science is always worth the wait.” Strange but true.

Photo via Sketch Jones