What other research questions are the Womens Health Initiative working on?
We will continue to follow the study cohorts to gain further insights into what happens when the hormone therapy is stopped. We are doing several laboratory-based studies of risk markers, genomics, and proteomics to see if we can identify women who might be at increased risk if they take hormone therapy. One such study suggests that it might be useful to measure the blood cholesterol levels prior to hormone therapy—elevated cholesterol levels themselves confer risk of coronary heart disease, and that risk appears to be amplified further by hormone therapy. Where do you see this work going in five to ten years? The WHI has several other components, including trials of low-fat dietary pattern and calcium and vitamin D, together with a large observational study of women who were not enrolled in the trials. We would like to follow the entire cohort of more than 100,000 women for decades to study the long-term effects of the interventions. More importantly, many of these women are now enter
