Verbal memory may improve with ERT; menopause transition.(Gynecology)

PHILADELPHIA -- Estrogen replacement therapy was linked to modest improvement in one measurement of verbal memory but did not improve other measures of cognitive function in a small study of perimenopausal or recently menopausal women.

The study is the first to examine the effect of estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) on cognitive performance in symptomatic menopausal women. "Our study showed a modest effect, but we did not find a global cognitive benefit" with ERT use, said Dr. Hadine Joffe, a psychiatrist in the reproductive psychiatry program at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

"The importance of the study is that it looks at women in the menopause transition whose brains are experiencing marked hormonal changes. This population contrasts with older, postmenopausal women over aged 65 whose brains have had low, unchanging levels of hormones for many years," Dr. Joffe said at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society.

She noted that her study had "nothing to do with the reduction of risk of dementia," a reference to recent data from the Women's Health Initiative that indicated estrogen plus progestin therapy was associated with an increased risk of probable dementia in older, postmenopausal women. In other recent studies, estrogen replacement therapy--either unopposed or in combination with progestin--did not slow the decline of memory and cognition in postmenopausal women.

In Dr. Joffe's double-blinded study, 52 women ...