Menopause can be a long, brutal, and sometimes debilitating condition for many women.

And according to a new analysis published in the medical journal Jama,

it's time to reconsider hormone therapy as an important treatment.

Stephanie Sigh has our look.

Women in the throes of menopause know the transition is anything but fun.

The symptoms can include hot flashes, irritability,

migraines, and changes in sexual desire and function. hormone replacement

therapy has ebbed and flowed in its popularity over three decades with a mixed

picture of its risks and benefits. This new review of long-running data suggests

that for women in early menopause the benefits of hormone replacement

therapy do outweigh the risks. For a closer look at the evidence I'm joined by

Dr. Lauren Stryker. She's a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern Universities

Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Striker, thank you so much for joining the

news hour. So in the early 2000s there was a lot of fear that started to emerge

around hormone replacement therapies, correlation with breast cancer and other diseases.

Can you just put into context how disruptive those findings were for women's health back then and how this new study fits into our understanding of safety today?

Well, certainly what happened 22 years ago when the W.H.I was first released was a huge deal because

it was terrifying for the millions of women who'd been taking their hormone therapy, thinking

that not only would it relieve their menopause symptoms but that it might

also help in terms of prevention of chronic diseases and within one day people were

literally flushing their hormone therapy down the toilet out of fear that this hormone

therapy that had been recommended by their doctors was going to give them breast

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