WOMEN URGED TO CONSIDER HORMONES

Many more post-menopausal women should consider taking female hormones in the wake of striking findings that the drugs can sharply lower the risk of heart disease with few side effects, researchers say.

"If my mother were alive now, I would want her on the hormones," said Trudy Bush, an epidemiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center.Bush, one of the study's authors, said all post-menopausal women should consider taking hormones.

Dr. Elizabeth Barrett-Connor of the University of California at San Diego, another author, was more cautious. She said hormones shouldn't be prescribed for all post-menopausal women, but that many more should probably be taking the drugs.

"There are, unfortunately, women who would benefit from estrogens and are very frightened of them," she said Thursday.

The concern dates from the 1970s, when high doses of hormones used in birth control pills were linked to a risk of strokes and high blood pressure. The study found no evidence of either risk.

Fifteen percent to 30 percent of post-menopausal American women are now getting hormone treatments, Bush said.

The number of post-menopausal women is growing as the population ages. By 2000, 38 percent of American women will be 45 or over; that will increase to 45 percent in 2015.

The three-year, $20 million study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Findings were released Thursday at the American Heart Association's annual meeting.

The study found that women who took hormones in various combinations had improvements in a variety of heart disease risk factors. That included a significant boost in levels of so-called good cholesterol, which protects against heart disease.

That effect alone was enough to cut their risk of heart disease by up to 25 percent, depending upon the specific hormone treatment used. But the drugs had many other beneficial effects, so they probably reduced heart-disease risks even more, said Barrett-Connor.

"All of the treatments were remarkably effective," she said.

"Given the fact that coronary heart disease is the number one killer of American women, the importance of this landmark study should not be underestimated," said Dr. Claude Lenfant of the National Institutes of Health.

Heart disease killed 237,000 American women in 1990, according to the latest heart association figures.

The only important side effect in the study was a 33 percent rise in abnormalities in the lining of the uterus in women who took estrogen without other hormones. Such abnormalities can be precursors of endometrial cancer.