Hormone therapy after menopause may increase risk of gall stones

After my daughter’s brush with gall stones a couple of weeks ago, I now appreciate how painful they are. I think this is why this particular article caught my eye.

According to the HealthDay article, Hormone Replacement May Raise Women’s Gallbladder Risk, hormone therapy taken by mouth, as opposed to patches or gels, increases a woman’s chance of gall bladder disease if she is post-menopausal. What makes this important is that the risk of gall bladder disease is already higher as a woman ages, so this would make that risk even higher.

Gels and patches don’t appear to have the same effect because they don’t need to be metabolized through the liver as the oral hormones do.

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