Atlanta ? Five years after a landmark study scared millions of women off hormones for menopause symptoms, new research suggests the pills may offer some heart benefits for certain younger women who start taking them in their 50s.

Women who took estrogen suffered less hardening of the arteries than those who took dummy pills, researchers reported in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.

It was the latest study in recent months to suggest that women who take hormones at the start of menopause seem to gain some health benefits beyond relief from hot flashes. That is in sharp contrast to women who raise their health risks when they take hormones in their 60s and 70s.

The research is based on the Women’s Health Initiative, a huge federal study started in the 1990s that focused on the risks and benefits of menopause hormones for women.

One phase of the study was suspended in 2002 after researchers detected higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer and other problems in women who took an estrogen-progestin combination pill. Since then, some scientists have begun to slice the large study’s data for more nuanced meaning. They note that most of the women in the study were in their 60s or 70s when the research began. New analyses are focusing on women who were in their 50s when they joined the study.