LOS ANGELES — When Rachel Dorff was 42, she began going through menopause much earlier than most women. Her symptoms included hot flashes and a significant drop in sex drive.

“I wasn’t finding anything that seemed to help,” Dorff said.

Now she’s hoping to help others find answers as a participant in a USC clinical trial surrounding a new hormone therapy. She’s one of 360 women, half receiving estrogen and the other half, a placebo.

“I think I would have benefited from more options being offered to me by my doctor,” Dorff said.

Hormone therapy helps restore estrogen women lose as they age, preventing bone loss and fractures, but Dr. Howard Hodis, the study’s lead researcher at Keck Medicine of USC, also noticed something else, less heart disease, the number one killer of American women.

“The best time to start hormone therapy in women is when they’re close to menopause. We standardly say, within the first six years of menopause. This is when it looks like women glean the most benefit and had the least amount of risk,” Dr. Hodis said.

The multimillion dollar study funded by the National Institutes of Health is looking at how hormone replacement therapy affects both heart health and women’s thinking. A previous 2002 study linked hormone therapy with an increased risk of breast cancer, something Dr. Donna Shoupe says was misleading.

“They had eight extra breast cancers per 10,000 women, and that was not statistically significant when they used the adjusted relative risk,” she said.

But the damage was already done, and the stigma stayed. Today, only about 4% of menopausal women use hormone therapy compared to 25% before the 2002 study.

“I really want that word to get out that women look at those benefits and consider strongly the benefits vs. the risk of hormone therapy. I would say the risks are very low,” she said.

The trial is still seeking participants. To qualify, women have to be under 60 and within six years of having started menopause along with no history of diabetes, heart disease or stroke.

“Every six months, we have them come in and that’s where we do our testing, which includes bloodwork and ultrasound, where we can look at the carotid arteries,” Hodis said.

This visit marked Dorff’s two-year checkup.  

“It’s very rewarding for me to know that I’m doing something that’s helping the science of menopause,” she said.

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