The time has come to "seriously question" whether hormone-replacement therapy has any role in modern medicine, an expert says today in the medical journal the Lancet.

He argues that new research linking a form of HRT to higher mortality rates in lung cancer is the latest in a long line of evidence highlighting the serious risks of the therapy.

The article, by the medical academic Apar Kishor Ganti, published with the research, claims the results could be "another nail in the coffin for hormone-replacement therapy", used by women to ease the symptoms of menopause. Previous studies have shown that HRT, which is said to make women feel and look younger, can also increase the risk of breast cancer, heart disease and strokes.

The study was carried out as part of the Women's Health Initiative, a long-term national health strategy in the US, which involved more than 16,000 post-menopausal women. It looked at the effect of a particular form of combined hormone therapy with oestrogen plus progestin. It found that women who used it were not more likely to develop lung cancer, but that if they did develop it, they were more likely to die.

Kishor Ganti, from the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, writes: "These results, along with the findings showing no protection against coronary heart disease, seriously question whether HRT has any role in medicine today. It is difficult to presume that the benefits of routine use of such therapy for menopausal symptoms outweigh the risks of mortality, especially in the absence of improvement in the quality of life."

The study states: "Our findings should be considered before the initiation or continuation of combined hormone therapy in post-menopausal women, especially those with a high risk of lung cancer, such as current or long-term past smokers."

The reason for the increased mortality could be oestrogen stimulating the growth of new blood vessels – which can cause the cancer to grow and spread. Another possible cause could be that HRT makes the cancer difficult to detect, leading to a delay in diagnosis, it suggests.

Commenting on the study, Karol Sikora, a leading cancer specialist, said: "It is scientifically plausible that changing the hormonal environment of a woman's body could lead to a different response to treatments for lung cancer." He said there were many different studies looking at HRT and cancer and warned against drawing too firm a conclusion.

But he added: "I think HRT has been widely overused in the past, but now it is [prescribed with] much more [caution] and only for women with severe menopausal symptoms – and then only for a short time."

Professor Valerie Beral, director of Cancer Research UK's cancer epidemiology unit, said: "Many studies have shown that HRT can cause cancers of the breast and ovary. This new result for lung cancer is based on small numbers and could be a chance finding. But the government's recommendation that women use HRT for as short a time as possible would still apply."