Researchers conducted a prospective study involving nearly 32,000 postmenopausal women ages 48 to 83 from the population-based Swedish Mammography Cohort. Self-reported hormone use from a survey in 1997 was linked to a hospital-based national registry to determine hospital admissions for acute pancreatitis through 2010.Results appeared online Jan. 27 at CMAJ.
Over a total follow-up of nearly 390,000 person-years, there were 237 cases of incident acute pancreatitis. The age-standardized incidence rate was 71 cases per 100,000 person-years among women who had ever used hormone replacement therapy compared to 52 cases among women who had never done so.
The multivariable (age at menopause, education, smoking or alcohol use, adiposity or waist circumference, vegetable consumption) adjusted risk rate (RR) of acute pancreatitis was 1.57 (95% CI, 1.20 to 2.05) for hormone replacement therapy users compared with those who never had.
The risk did not differ by current or past use, but it seemed to be higher among women who used systemic therapy (RR, 1.92; 95% CI, 1.38 to 2.66) and among those who’d used therapy more than 10 years (RR, 1.87; 95% CI, 1.11 to 3.17). There was nearly 2.5 times the risk among women who had used systemic therapy for more than 10 years (RR, 2.44; 95% CI, 1.38 to 4.31). The association remained when adjusted for cholelithiasis.
For more on how to manage pancreatitis from all its possible etiologies, see the January 2014 cover story from ACP Internist.
