Wall Street Journal Examines Studies On Use Of Estrogen Duri

The Wall Street Journal on Monday examined several studies that look at the effect of estrogen use during and after menopause to boost brain function in women. According to the Journal, women have "long complained that their brains don't work as well during and after menopause as they did before," and recent research has yielded conflicting results about the safety and efficacy of taking estrogen to improve brain function during and after menopause. According to a study published in the May edition of the journal Menopause, women who take estrogen as a hormone replacement therapy close to the onset of menopause show improvements in complex cognitive skills, the Journal reports. Hadine Joffe, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues examined the results of cognitive tests from 52 menopausal women between age 40 and 60 before the outset of the study and again three months later. Half of the women were assigned to receive estrogen patches and half were assigned to receive a placebo for three months. Both groups received complex verbal learning tests at the beginning of the study and after three months. The study finds that women receiving estrogen therapy showed significant improvements on the learning tests. The group receiving estrogen made 43% fewer errors after three months, compared with the women in the placebo group whose test results improved 9%, the study finds. In addition, brain scan studies revealed that the women in the estrogen group had increased activation in parts of the brain associated with decision making and complex thinking, according to Joffe. According to the Journal, the Harvard study is "in sharp contrast" to findings from the Women's Health Initiative, which show that women ages 65 to 79 who take hormones are at a higher risk of dementia than those who do not take the hormones. However, the WHI study looked at women "long past menopause, and many researchers believe the results don't apply to younger women like those studied in the recent Harvard research," the Journal reports. According to the Journal, although it is not recommend that women take hormones to improve their brain function, physicians say that women who choose to take hormones to relieve symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes, should be reassured by recent news that they might help increase thinking skills (Parker-Pope, Wall Street Journal, 10/2).

"Reprinted with permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.
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Wall Street Journal Examines Studies On Use Of Estrogen Duri