Published 23 October 2025.
Publication
Hormone Replacement Therapy - England April 2015 to June 2025 statistical summary narrative (HTML)
Summary
This publication describes the prescribing of drugs that appear on the drug list for the Hormone Replacement Therapy Prescription Prepayment Certificate (HRT PPC), referred to as HRT items. This release is limited to all drugs that appear on the HRT PPC drug list and only includes data for drugs dispensed in the community in a primary care setting in England. It does not include data on medicines used in secondary care, prisons, or issued by a private prescriber.
This publication is an official statistic which has been released to support the work being undertaken by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England, and HRT suppliers.
It is intended to provide a national view of HRT prescribing for the use of policy makers, the general public and other users, and to be available to answer any high-level questions in this area.
This release includes metrics on the volume and cost of HRT prescribing, and the number of patients receiving prescribing for these drugs. Various demographic breakdowns, including by a measure of deprivation, and a geographical breakdown by Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) are also included.
Key findings
In England in 2024/25:
- there were 14.7 million Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) items prescribed - an 11% increase since 2023/24
- the estimated number of identified patients increased by 6.4%, from 2.6 million in 2023/24 to 2.8 million in 2024/25
- Estradiol 0.06% gel was the British National Formulary (BNF) presentation with the highest number of items prescribed at 1.3 million items - an increase of 13% since 2023/24
- the least deprived areas had more than twice as many identified patients receiving HRT prescribing compared to the most deprived areas
- an HRT Prescription Prepayment Certificate (HRT PPC) was used for 21% of HRT items - an increase of nearly 7 percentage points since 2023/24
Resource list
Financial year summary tables (Excel: 309KB)Monthly summary tables (Excel: 2.46MB)Appendix A – HRT drug list (Excel: 23.9KB)
Pre-release access list (HTML)
Background
You can find more information on what the data in this publication covers, and what methodology has been used, in the HRT background information and methodology note.
Background information and methodology note (HTML)
Management information
This data has been released to complement the Hormone Replacement Therapy statistics, but is management information and is not an official statistic.
Exemption category management information (Excel: 224KB)
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Contact us
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Responsible statistician: Jessica Tarn-Thompson