A Little Rock, Ark., federal jury found Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Upjohn (a Pfizer unit) liable for $27 million in punitive damages to Donna Scroggin, who sued the drug manufacturers in 2004 after developing breast cancer after taking hormone-replacement therapy. The award includes $19.3 million from Wyeth and $7.7 from Upjohn.

Wyeth manufactures Premarin, an estrogen replacement, and Prempro, which is a combination of estrogen and progestin. These, along with Upjohn's Provera, which contains progestin, are commonly prescribed to treat the unpleasant effects of menopause.

Sales of Wyeth's hormone-replacement drugs topped $2 billion before a 2002 study linked the medicines to a higher risk of breast cancer, according to a report published on Bloomberg.com. The article states that the Women's Health Initiative study, which was sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, concluded that women who took a combination of estrogen and progestin, as found in Prempro, increased their risk of getting invasive breast cancer by 24 percent.

Both drugs remain on the market and carry the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and both continue to be prescribed annually to hundreds of thousands of women.

About 25 million American women use hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to ease the discomfort of menopause.

There are about 5,300 similar cases pending across the country for Premarin and Prempro. Beasley Allen currently has 592 hormone therapy cases under review.