Menopause<\/a> Society agree that for women over 45, menopause should be diagnosed based on symptoms alone. Hormone levels fluctuate daily and, experts agree, offer no reliable diagnostic value.<\/p>\n\u201cThese tests are marketed to patients and clinicians as necessary for \u2018individualising\u2019 hormone therapy,\u201d Sterry said. \u201cYet in reality, these tests are of limited clinical use because there is no clearly defined therapeutic window for menopausal hormone therapy, and some testing techniques do not offer accurate or precise assessment of hormone levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
For perimenopause and menopause, she added, hormone testing offers no reliable way to determine who will benefit from treatment, when the final menstrual period will occur or whether it is safe to discontinue contraception.<\/p>\n
Dr Paula Briggs, chair of the British Menopause Society, agreed. \u201cThings have gone very wrong,\u201d she said. \u201cThe growing popularity of these tests has led to women having unrealistic expectations about what HRT can offer \u2013 particularly around mental illness and the existence of a \u2018quick fix\u2019. That, in turn, leads to the rise of unregulated treatments like expensive bioidentical hormones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Briggs emphasised the need for collaborative, NHS-led care. She said that she is so concerned about the commercialisation of women\u2019s health that she no longer practises privately.<\/p>\n
Dr Susanna Unsworth, a menopause and women\u2019s health specialist, agreed that hormone tests were \u201cabsolutely\u201d harming care and are a \u201csignificant\u201d problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am definitely seeing this more,\u201d she said. \u201cWomen often ask me before their appointment if they need blood tests done first. My answer is almost always no but increasingly, they turn up with pages of results they have organised themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trouble is, most of these results cannot be interpreted meaningfully and that puts us both in a difficult position: the companies often advise women to take these results to their menopause doctor, so when I explain that they do not add value, it undermines their trust in me,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Dr Martin Thornton, medical director at the private clinic Bluecrest, defended his use of the tests.<\/p>\n
Pointing out that they offer a GP consultation with the data results, he said: \u201cA lot of this is about empowering women by providing them with data to correlate to their symptoms, because a lot of the symptoms are not straightforward.<\/p>\n
\u201cTesting allows people to open up a dialogue with their doctor and can help you understand if it\u2019s the menopause or something else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Sterry rebutted that: \u201cThere is no evidence that the symptoms a women experiences in perimenopause or the severity of those symptoms, correlates to data received from blood tests.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a women has symptoms and her tests show no signs of menopause, then that can be very confusing,\u201d she added. \u201cThis leads to underdiagnosis and undertreatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe principle of evidence-based practice is that a test should be done only if its result will directly guide patient care,\u201d she said. \u201cHormone testing in menopause treatment is not supported by evidence and does not improve care. Treatment should be guided by a patient\u2019s individual symptoms and not by treating the numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asda has been approached for comment. A Superdrug spokesperson said: \u201cFollowing customer feedback we launched the FSH [follicle stimulating hormone] test as women told us that they would like the choice to be able to measure their FSH levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour result comes with tailored medical advice from our doctors based on a combination of the assessment answers, and the test result.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Expensive, over-the-counter hormone tests for menopause are clinically useless and risk undermining women\u2019s healthcare, senior doctors have warned.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-125987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}