Credit score: RDNE Inventory challenge from Pexels
Many direct to client menopause companies are pointless and don’t enhance care, warn specialists in The BMJ.
They argue that the sharp rise in business companies for girls searching for reduction from menopausal signs raises considerations concerning the reliability and potential business bias of the data, and that signs are finest assessed by an intensive scientific historical past with remedy selections guided by scientific response and affected person preferences.
One of the crucial troubling traits arising from this surge is the promotion of routine hormone panel testing for the analysis of menopausal signs, they write. These checks can value a whole bunch of {dollars} and are marketed to sufferers and clinicians as needed for “individualizing” hormone remedy.
But in actuality, these checks are of restricted scientific use as a result of there is no such thing as a clearly outlined therapeutic window for menopausal hormone remedy, and a few testing methods don’t provide correct or exact evaluation of hormone ranges.
For perimenopause and menopause, hormone testing provides no dependable strategy to decide who will profit from remedy, when the ultimate menstrual interval will happen, or whether or not it’s secure to discontinue contraception, they clarify.
Scientific pointers from the British Menopause Society, Nationwide Institute for Well being and Care Excellence, American Faculty of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and others agree: in girls over age 45 presenting with validated signs of menopause, together with menstrual irregularity, menopause is a scientific analysis, and hormone testing is pointless.
Regardless of this, many ladies now current with detailed hormone panels from wellness suppliers or on-line companies which can be typically used to justify taking custom-made hormone preparations or dietary supplements based mostly on marginal deviations from hormone thresholds that aren’t grounded in proof, write the authors.
Such custom-made hormone preparations (often known as compounded hormone regimens) should not regulated in the identical approach as commonplace menopausal hormone remedy and haven’t been examined for effectiveness and security.
There’s additionally concern that inconsistencies within the portions of estrogen or progestogen in compounded hormone regimens can lead to irregular cell progress or most cancers within the womb (uterus) lining, they add.
Till we will set up individualized goal hormone ranges, there is no such thing as a position for business hormonal panel testing to information remedy, they argue. Within the meantime, such testing provides solely a false sense of precision.
They acknowledge that innovation is required however recommend that the normalization of hormone panel testing may very well be a symptom of a bigger downside: the commercialization of ladies’s well being and a motion away from evidence-based observe.
For midlife girls, efficient remedy begins not with numbers, however with listening, they conclude.
Extra data:
Editorial: Menopause misinformation is harming care, The BMJ (2025). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.r1695
Offered by
British Medical Journal
Quotation:
Menopause misinformation is harming care, warn specialists (2025, August 20)
retrieved 20 August 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2025-08-menopause-misinformation-experts.html
This doc is topic to copyright. Aside from any truthful dealing for the aim of personal research or analysis, no
half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is supplied for data functions solely.
