Objectives: To determine the impact of Women Health Initiative (WHI) trial on the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in the Hong Kong public health sector.
Methods: The central prescription database of the Hospital Authority was used to describe the half-yearly trend in the use of HRT between July 2000 and December 2003. The data of hysterectomy was retrieved from another clinical database.
Results: Before the publication of the WHI trial in July 2002, conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) and its related products dominated HRT prescribing. Relative to the first half of 2002, there was an immediate and substantial decline by 43.5% in the prescriptions of combined CEE/progestogen products and a modest decline by 22.4% in the prescriptions of CEE-alone therapy in the second half of 2002. In the first half of 2003, a decline in the prescriptions of all HRT preparations except raloxifene was observed. However, in the second half of 2003, there were no more declines in overall HRT users. Relative to the first half of 2002, the decline in the overall HRT users in the first half of 2003 was more than 46% in women aged 50-69. The decline was greater in women with a history of hysterectomy (60.3%) than women without (38.6%), but was similar between gynaecology specialty (41.7%) and non-gynaecology specialty (43.9%).
Conclusions: Similar to the U.S., an immediate and substantial decline in the use of CEE and its related products was observed in Hong Kong after the publication of the WHI trial.