Estrogen-only hormone therapy could lower risk of Alzheimer’s

Estrogen-only hormone therapy could lower risk of Alzheimer’s

In a retrospective study, people taking estrogen-only hormone therapy for menopause were less likely to see signs of dementia

Alzheimer’s disease disproportionately affects women—around two thirds of the people who develop it are female. Why that is the case isn’t totally clear . It may be because women tend to live longer than men or perhaps because of social or genetic factors. But emerging research points to another potential risk factor: menopause.

During menopause , the ovaries stop producing mature eggs, and the production of estrogen, a sex hormone critical to female reproductive health, slows. Research hints that this precipitous drop in estrogen may affect how our brains age.

“One of the prevailing hypotheses is that this sharp decline in estrogen may somehow contribute to differences in brain aging,” including the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s, says Jennifer Bruno, a cognitive neuroscientist at Stanford University.

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Now a new study by Bruno and her colleagues that was published in Neurology on Wednesday provides another clue to the possible link between menopause and dementia.

The researchers analyzed two datasets that included a total of 21,462 patient records; for one of the datasets, nearly 3,000 people had donated their brains for science when they died. Overall, patients who took estrogen-only hormone therapy for menopause were less likely to display signs of memory loss or cognitive decline or to be diagnosed with dementia.