Hormone therapy is widely used for contraception, disease treatment, and as hormone replacement therapy in women. Many studies have attempted to establish the relationship between the use of exogenous hormones and the development of CNS tumors; however, the results remain inconclusive. The objective of this meta-analysis is to evaluate the association between hormone therapy use and the risk of developing central nervous system (CNS) tumors, particularly meningioma and glioma. PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were searched for studies reporting the association between hormone therapy use and CNS tumor risk. The outcomes analyzed were overall risk for CNS tumors, meningioma, and glioma, described as odds ratios (ORs) and hazard ratios (HRs). Statistical analyses were performed using R (version 4.4.2), with a significance level of p < 0.05. The analysis of the 19 studies involving 2.398.681 patients demonstrated a significant association between hormone therapy use and the overall risk of CNS tumors (OR = 1.69; 95% CI, 1.28–2.23; p < 0.001; I² = 98.5%). Subgroup analysis revealed an increased risk for the development of meningioma (OR = 2.10; 95% CI, 1.52–2.91; I² = 98.6%), whereas for gliomas the exposure may not be associated with an increased risk (OR = 0.90; 95% CI, 0.64–1.27; I² = 84.9%). The overall risk of CNS tumors was also expressed using hazard ratios (HR = 1.18; 95% CI, 0.97–1.45; p = 0.097; I² = 71.0%), showing an insignificant trend favoring non-use of hormone therapy, with an increased risk observed for meningioma (HR = 1.59; 95% CI, 1.09–2.32; I² = 72.8%), while based on the analyzed data, hormone therapy use may not appear to increase the risk of glioma development (HR = 0.99; 95% CI, 0.86–1.16; I² = 36%). This meta-analysis suggests that exogenous hormonal therapy is associated with an increased risk of central nervous system tumors in women, driven predominantly by meningioma risk. No consistent association was observed for glioma.
Falcão et al. (Sat,) studied this question.