(CBS) The North American Menopause Society says bioidentical hormone treatments might not be the best way to combat the symptoms of menopause.

In an editorial in the journal Menopause Management, the society's executive director says the recent hype surrounding bioidenticals masks the fact that the ingredients are basically no different from those in FDA approved hormone treatments whose use has fallen since a study in 2002 found women using hormones faced a higher risk of breast cancer.

"Bioidenticals are hormones that are marketed as being chemically identical to the hormones produced in a woman's body," The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay told co-anchor Julie Chen. "And they are said to be specially compounded to match the needs of individual patients."

Proponents of bioidenticals, including actress Suzanne Somers, say those qualities make them superior to synthetic hormone replacement therapies approved by the FDA, but the editorial says that claims that bioidenticals are superior are "nonsense" and urges doctors not to prescribe them.

"Unlike the synthetic hormones approved by the FDA, there is no government supervision of the manufacturing process," Dr. Senay said. "So there's no assurance of the bioidenticals' potency, or of their purity. Individual pharmacists can mix them any way they want. And while these are licensed pharmacists, there's no research to indicate the efficacy or safety of the mixtures they produce."

Dr. Senay said there is no direct evidence that bioidenticals are not safe because they have not gone through rigorous clinical trials, which also means that there is no proof that the products are safe.

"Critics of bioidenticals say nobody really knows what these products can do, good or bad and they see history repeating itself," she said. "For decades, each time women have rushed to use the latest hormone therapy, hoping to slow the aging process, later studies have linked the hormone products to disease risk."

So far, when if comes to fighting menopause symptoms, the only approach that has been proven effective is hormone therapy, Dr. Senay said.

"Soy preparations and herbs like black cohosh do no better than placebo. So if symptoms are severe, the society and other groups like the American Cancer Society say the FDA approved synthetic products may be the only options, as long as women take them under close supervision by a doctor," she said. "If they feel they must take hormones, they should do so with the lowest dose possible, for the shortest time possible."

© MMVII, CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Back To Top