Osteoarthritis and Hormones

With a dramatic increase in osteoarthritis in women after menopause, it would suggest that decreased female hormones would be a major factor. Here are some studies that have been done over the years that came to the same conclusion.

A study on estrogen replacement and osteoarthritis by Dr. Genant at the University of California, San Francisco, was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 1996. It was titled “Association of estrogen replacement therapy with the risk of osteoarthritis of the hip in elderly white women” and was based on the examination of 4,366 postmenopausal  women who were over the age of 65.  Hip X-Rays were used to assess the state of the hip joint throughout the study. In this study they found that women who took oral estrogen had a 38% reduced risk in developing osteoarthritis of the hip.   The authors concluded that ” Postmenopausal estrogen replacement therapy may protect against OsteoArthritis of the hip.”

Dr Zhang of Boston University School of Medicine published a study on Arthritis of the Knee in “Arthritis and Rheum” in 1998, called “Estrogen replacement therapy and worsening of radiographic knee osteoarthritis: the Framingham Study. ” They studied 551 postmenopausal women over 8 years with periodic x-rays of the knees. In this study they concluded that women using estrogen replacement had a 60% decrease in osteoarthritis compared to non-users.

In 2010 another study was done of severe osteoarthritis in 3147 patients who were compared to 2,381 that did not have the disease. The results were published in the journal “Osteoarthritis Cartilage” by Dr Riancho, stated that “These results are consistent with the hypothesis that estrogen activity may influence the development of large-joint osteoarthritis.”

A study done in 2008 by Dr. Tanko from Denmark over a 30 year period concluded that, “The effects of estrogen on articular cartilage further corroborate the due consideration of estrogen therapy for maintaining not only bone but also cartilage health in postmenopausal women.”

Mainstream medicine and the pharmaceutical industry still refute these and other studies and still recommend the use of NSAIDs rather than hormone replacement therapy. We recommend that you do your research and consider preventative steps by using bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.