Updated 11/03/09
The Women's
Health Initiative (WHI) was a major 15-year research
program to address the most common causes of death, disability
and poor quality of life in postmenopausal women -- cardiovascular
disease, cancer, and osteoporosis.
Findings from the WHI Postmenopausal Hormone Therapy Trials
The WHI was launched in 1991 and consisted of a set of
clinical trials and an observational study, which together
involved 161,808 generally healthy postmenopausal women.
The clinical trials were designed to test the effects of
postmenopausal hormone therapy, diet modification, and calcium
and vitamin D supplements on heart disease, fractures, and
breast and colorectal cancer.
The hormone trial had two studies: the estrogen-plus-progestin
study of women with a uterus and the estrogen-alone study
of women without a uterus. (Women with a uterus were given
progestin in combination with estrogen, a practice known
to prevent endometrial cancer.) In both hormone therapy
studies, women were randomly assigned to either the hormone
medication being studied or to placebo. Those studies have
now ended. The women in these studies are now participating
in a follow-up phase, which will last until 2010.
If you are a researcher and wish to explore the possibility
of using WHI public-use data, please see The
Biologic Specimen and Data Repository Coordinating Center (BioLINCC) policy website for
information. If you go to the main BioLINCC website you can search on the Women's Health Initiative to see what resources are available.
If you wish to collaborate with a WHI investigator or are
interested in applying for future Broad Agency Announcement
(BAA) funding please visit the WHI
Scientific Resources website.
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