Pergialiotis Vasilios, Pitsouni Elina, Prodromidou Anastasia, Frountzas Maximos, Perrea Despina N, Vlachos Georgios D
1Laboratory of Experimental Surgery and Surgical Research N.S. Christeas, Athens University Medical School, Athens, Greece 2Division of Gynecologic Oncology, First Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Athens University Medical School, Alexandra Hospital, Athens, Greece.
Menopause. 2016 Mar;23(3):335-42. doi: 10.1097/GME.0000000000000508.
Hormone therapy (HT) alleviates menopausal symptoms, but there is a lack of consensus regarding its use among premenopausal ovarian cancer survivors.
We systematically reviewed the literature and searched the Medline (1966-2014), Scopus (2004-2014), Popline (1974-2014), ClinicalTrials.gov (2008-2014), and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials CENTRAL (1999-2014) databases and the reference lists of electronically retrieved studies. Statistical meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.1 software.
Six studies were included in our systematic review, which involved 1,521 women. Among them, 451 women (29.6%) received HT, whereas the remaining 1,070 women (70.4%) did not receive any treatment. We noticed a statistically significant reduction of ovarian cancer-related deaths among women who received HT (odds ratio, 0.47; 95% CI, 0.28-0.80); however, disease recurrence rates did not differ between the two groups (odds ratio, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.45-1.14). Studies included in the present systematic review did not report a significant difference in overall survival and disease-free survival rates among women receiving HT and controls.
Based on the results of meta-analysis, HT does not influence the odds of ovarian cancer recurrence; however, this conclusion must be confirmed separately because of significant limitations in the methodological quality of the studies included.