Hormone therapies for menopause will no longer carry a black box warning about serious risks such as breast cancer, heart attack and stroke, the Food and Drug Administration announced Monday.

In the announcement and an accompanying editorial in the medical journal JAMA, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and other agency officials said the warnings are based on outdated science and have discouraged women from taking hormone therapy.

The medications are commonly prescribed to treat menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, mood swings, difficulty sleeping, urinary tract infections, bone fractures and vaginal dryness. They replace estrogen and progesterone — hormones that decline during menopause — and come in the form of pills, patches, gels and creams.

“We are going to stop the fear machine st

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