Effects of Hormone Replacement Therapy on Women's Lung Health and Disease

Abstract

This review provides an overview of menopausal hormone therapy and pulmonary disease risk, with a focus on the effect of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on pulmonary function and its relation to lung diseases. This summary is based on authors' knowledge in the field of HRT and supplemented by a PubMed search using the terms "menopause hormone therapy," "asthma", "lung cancer", "chronic obstructive pulmonary disease", "lung function", and "pulmonary hypertension". Available evidence indicates that there is limited research on the role of sex hormones in the susceptibility, severity, and progression of chronic respiratory diseases. However, some studies suggest that the hormonal changes that occur during the menopausal transition may have an impact on pulmonary function and respiratory diseases. Women are in need of convenient access to a safe and effective modality for personalized HRT based on an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven platform that will enable them to receive personalized hormonal treatment through frequent, convenient, and accurate measurements of hormone levels in peripheral blood.

Keywords: Asthma; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Hormonal replacement therapy; Lung cancer; Pulmonary function; Pulmonary hypertension.

Fig. 1

Structures of small molecule steroids

Fig. 2

Estrogen causes short- and long-term effects on pulmonary vessels (Figure was adapted with permission from Springer publisher)

Fig. 3

Estrogen and progesterone have different effects on cancerous cells

Fig. 4

Relation between the sex hormones levels and asthma in female and male subjects. Females undergoing contraceptive hormonal treatment decreased asthma prevalence but hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increased asthma incidence (Figure was copyright re-used with permission from Wiley publisher)