[Hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women: all the treatments are not the same].

Different estrogens combined with various progestins, administered are used in hormone therapy (HT) for postmenopausal women. All these compounds, which do not have the same chemical structure and the same pharmacokinetic behavior as the bio-identicals hormones, estradiol 17beta and progesterone, have intrinsic properties which can lead to tangible differences in therapeutic results. Recent biological and clinical data strongly suggest that the coronary and venous thromboembolic risk as well as the breast cancer risk attributed to HT use would not be the same according to the therapeutic scheme used. This article will briefly review the general principle of a true "hormone replacement therapy" and will discuss the recent data supporting the hypothesis that the cardiovascular and breast cancer risks might be lower with bio-identical hormones than with other therapeutic schemes.