By Wendy Tuohy
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) has pulled its support for a menopause conference for doctors that features global women’s health influencers, some of whose claims about hormone therapies have come under fire.
The college said the So Hot Right Now conference, where the headline speaker is high-profile British GP Louise Newson, was no longer deemed eligible to be credited as professional development for GPs who are college members.
The conference is scheduled for March 2 at Sydney’s Hyatt Regency hotel. A general admission symposium, So Hot Right Now – Redefining Menopause, will be held the day before at the Sydney Opera House, with tickets ranging from $119 to $350. That event is being marketed as featuring world leaders in women’s health “alongside Australia’s foremost experts”.
It features Newson – a popular Instagrammer who presented to the Senate’s 2024 inquiry into menopause – and fellow celebrity menopause doctor Mary Claire Haver.
Newson lost British Menopause Society registration as a menopause specialist late last year after the BBC’s Panorama program investigated women’s physical and mental health issues that they said arose from hormone prescription at her clinics.
An inquiry into “information of concern” about the Newson Health clinics was launched by the UK’s health watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, after the program aired.
Haver is an American obstetrician and gynaecologist who created and sells menopause supplements under the brand The ’Pause Life. She has a combined Instagram and TikTok following of more than 4.5 million.
She is recognised as an influential menopause educator, but has drawn criticism from long-term menopause doctors “for recommending hormones for uses that stray from official medical guidelines and, they say, risk harming women”, according to the New York Times.
A medical source, who did not want to be named because of tensions in the menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) debate, told this masthead that at least five Australian medical specialists and academics had voiced concerns to the RACGP about claims made by speakers at the So Hot Right Now events.
The specialists had complained some speakers were “putting ideology above the evidence base [on the powers of some hormone therapy]”, she said. The ideology in question is the belief that women have the right to hormone treatment that could “make menopause optional” in future.
MHT has been hotly politicised. International practitioners have built large followings, in part by telling women they should have access to hormones they say offer potentially life-changing health benefits. Many of these practitioners sell their own health products.
Some have been criticised or questioned by established menopause researchers, including Monash University’s Professor Susan Davis, who say portrayals of certain hormonal treatments as revolutionary are not supported by clinical trial data.
Davis says suggestions that testosterone therapy, in particular, improves energy levels, concentration/cognitive function and motivation in women are spurious, as are assertions that testosterone declines at menopause and never returns.
“Louise Newson says women need to know menopause is forever, and once your hormones go down they’ll never go up again – which is actually not true,” says Davis, an endocrinologist and head of Monash University’s women’s health research program.
“Three research groups [including Davis’] have now shown testosterone starts to increase from their mid-60s … based on the published data, there has not been evidence testosterone levels fall at menopause.”
A spokeswoman for Newson said the question of education accreditation for So Hot Right Now was for the conference organisers, and that the Care Quality Commission [CQC] was carrying out a routine inspection of Newson Health, “not a formal investigation”.
“Newson Health is confident in the quality of care it provides and maintains a CQC Good rating,” she said.
“Newson Health utilises a wealth of clinical experience and data, as well as the best available scientific evidence, to treat every patient on an individualised basis and provide the best possible menopause care.”
Professor Martha Hickey, chair of obstetrics and gynaecology at Melbourne University and the Royal Women’s and Mercy hospitals, said some influencers were dismissing evidence that combined menopausal hormone therapy increases the risk of breast cancer.
“This information, based on the largest random controlled trial of menopause hormone therapy, has certainly not been ‘debunked’,” she said.
“There is a significantly increased risk of breast cancer with combined MHT – amounting to a 56 per cent increase after 10 years of use. Whilst Newson et al claim that newer MHT products do not increase breast cancer risk, there is no robust data to support this,” Hickey said.
Davis has trials under way to test if testosterone therapy may prevent bone loss and improve muscle mass and function at menopause, and offer any protection from heart failure.
Her earlier studies included questions asking women on testosterone trials if they felt better when given testosterone, but the result showed both the placebo group and those on the active compound said they felt better.
Davis said a lot was at stake when inaccurate information circulated online – women could overdose on testosterone formulations designed to be used by men, or miss out on much-needed therapy for depression if hormonal fluctuations were deemed to be the problem and hormone therapy the solution.
“There is no evidence from clinical trials that, compared with the placebo, testosterone will improve depressed mood,” she said.
“Women could be missing out on treatment effective for their symptoms, and then there’s the cost: women risk spending money on something that will not help.”
Dr Sarah White, chief executive of the not-for-profit Jean Hailes for Women’s Health, echoed Davis’ concerns, saying: “We have some clinicians coming here presenting themselves as world experts, yet some of what they’re putting out on social media is not accurate.”
“What’s at stake is women being made to feel like they’re missing out on care, when in fact they’re getting the correct care,” she said.
“Also at stake is GPs feeling they’re being pushed into prescribing something that may not be appropriate – there is a case we are undermining the confidence women have in their GP.”
The key organiser of So Hot Right Now, Sydney GP and founder of the platform Healthy Hormones, Dr Ceri Cashell, said organisers were surprised the RACGP did not contact them directly about their concerns regarding the conference. The conference also no longer appears on the medical education website PraxHub, which was presenting it as a provider to RACGP members.
“No individuals have raised concerns directly with the organisers regarding the event or its content,” she said. “We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from participants and stakeholders.”
She said the conference will only present current evidence surrounding testosterone use by menopausal women for hypoactive sexual desire disorder (low libido), which Davis has researched. Newson – who discusses the benefits of testosterone widely on social media – had not been asked to speak on this topic.
“The information presented will be evidence-based and aligned with the best practices in menopause care,” Cashell said.
Respected women’s psychiatric expert Professor Jayashri Kulkarni, director of Monash University’s HER Centre, had not heard on Saturday about the RACGP’s decision, but said she would still be part of So Hot Right Now, at which she would discuss mental health issues related to hormone fluctuations.
“It’s important to focus discussions … [on] patient care, not ideologies,” she said. “Evidence from scientific clinical trials is important, but so is the ‘art’ of medicine, which is about clinical experience, listening and providing compassionate care.”
On Saturday afternoon, the So Hot Right Now conference was still being advertised on its website as being approved by the RACGP. It said it counted for six hours of educational activity for GPs, who must complete 50 hours a year.
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