the effects of tibolone on risk factors of cardiovascular disease in menopausal women

background: tibolone is frequently used as a hormone-like alternative to traditional hrt. therefore, it is valuable to compare the effects of tibolone and hrt on cardiovascular diseases risk factors.   methods: a total of 156 healthy non-surgical postmenopausal women were included in an open randomized study. they were assigned to receive daily 2.5 mg tibolone plus one cal+d (500 mg calcium and 200 iu vitamin d) tablet (n=52), 0.625 mg conjugated equine estrogen and 2.5 mg medroxy progesterone (cee/mpa) plus one cal+d tablet (n=52), or one cal+d tablet (n=52). the latter group was used as control. the women were followed for six months. the body mass index (bmi), blood pressure (bp), serum levels of high density lipoprotein (hdl), low-density lipoprotein (ldl), and triglyceride (tg), c reactive protein (crp), sex hormone binding globulin (shbg), free testosterone index (fti), and free estradiol index (fei) were determined before and after the interventions.   results: compared to baseline values, bmi, bp, crp, shbg, hdl, fti, and fei were significantly different after the treatments in the tibolone and cee/mpa receiving groups (p<0.05 ), but not in the control group. moreover, serum ldl and tg levels changed significantly after the treatments in all the three groups (p<0.01). there were significant differences between the tibolone and cee/mpa groups in terms of crp, ldl, hdl, tg, shbg, fti, fei and bp (p<0.01).   conclusion: tibolone may be considered an alternative to conventional hrt in postmenopausal women. however, clinical recommendations regarding the effects of tibolone on cardiovascular outcome needs further studies.