A soy-based therapy fails to offer any improvements for women going through the menopause – and may aggravate their symptoms, researchers reported last night.
Soy isoflavone tablets are among the alternatives women have turned to following the discrediting of hormone replacement therapy.
But a five-year study in Miami, USA, has found the tablets do not lead to improvements in symptoms of menopause – nor do they prevent loss of bone.
Some 248 women took part in the research – half of them taking soy and the other half placebos.
The research, reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that women who took soy were more likely than others to develop hot flushes – some 48 per cent had this problem compared with 32 per cent of those who did not get the treatment.
In all other ways soy made no difference to what happened to the women.
The researchers led by Dr Silvina Levis, of the Miami Veterans Affairs Healthcare System and Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Florida, USA, write: "Because of concerns regarding the risk of oestrogens, a need exists for alternative interventions that could provide the beneficial effects of estrogens in bone and menopausal symptoms without the adverse effects on breast and cardiovascular health.
"We found that our population of women in the first five years of menopause, on average, had low rates of bone loss, and that 200 mg of soy isoflavone tablets taken once daily does not prevent bone loss or reduce bone turnover or menopausal symptoms."
Arch Intern Med. 2011;171[15]:1363-1369
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