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National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

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Your Environment. Your Health.

Publication Detail

Title: Postmenopausal hormone use and lens opacities.

Authors: Weintraub, June M; Taylor, Allen; Jacques, Paul; Willett, Walter C; Rosner, Bernard; Colditz, Graham A; Chylack, Leo T; Hankinson, Susan E

Published In Ophthalmic Epidemiol, (2002 Jul)

Abstract: Women are at higher risk for age-related cataract than men, and it has been hypothesized that this difference is due in part to gender-related hormonal differences.We investigated the association between postmenopausal hormone use and lens opacities in a population of 480 postmenopausal women from the Nurses' Health Study for whom we had prospectively collected exposure data. Participants received standardized eye exams; the Lens Opacity Classification System III (LOCS III) was used to measure the degree of opacification.A total of 342 women had some opacity in one or both eyes. Overall, we did not observe a significant association between current hormone use and presence of any type of opacity (compared to never users, multivariate relative risk: 0.85; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.54-1.34). In ordinal logistic regression compared to never users, current hormone users had multivariate relative risks of cortical opacities of 0.80 (95% CI: 0.54-1.19) and for past users the relative risk was 0.76 (95% CI: 0.48-1.22). For nuclear opacities, the comparable relative risk for current use of hormones was 0.77 (95% CI: 0.52-1.13), and for past use the relative risk was 1.48 (95% CI: 0.92-2.34). Current use of estrogen-only preparations was associated with a 49% decreased risk of nuclear opacities compared to never use (multivariate relative risk 0.51, 95% CI: 0.29-0.89).While the overall findings are null, they do not exclude the possibility of a protective effect, particularly among current estrogen users.

PubMed ID: 12045885 Exiting the NIEHS site

MeSH Terms: Cataract/chemically induced; Cataract/classification; Cataract/epidemiology*; Estrogen Replacement Therapy/statistics & numerical data*; Female; Humans; Incidence; Lens, Crystalline/drug effects; Lens, Crystalline/pathology; Middle Aged; Prospective Studies; Risk Factors; United States/epidemiology

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