Scientists from the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School found that the use of hormone therapy during menopause may be associated with an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, but they did not recommend that women stop taking hormones. Research published in the journal BMJ.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is used to relieve common symptoms of menopause: hot flashes and night sweats. Treatment includes estrogen-only or pills containing a combination of estrogen and progestin, as well as skin patches, gels, and creams.
In the new study, researchers analyzed data from 5,500 women with dementia and 55,900 women without dementia between 2000 and 2018. All women lived in Denmark and were between the ages of 50 and 60 in 2000. Other important risk factors for dementia were also taken into account, such as income level, education quality, hypertension, diabetes, and presence of thyroid disease.
The analysis showed that women who took a combination of estrogen and progestin had a 24% higher incidence of various types of dementia (including Alzheimer’s disease) compared with women who did not take hormones at menopause.
Women who took hormones for 12 years or longer had a 74% higher risk of developing dementia than women who did not take hormones. Hormone use for one year or less increased the risk of dementia by 21%. In addition, a particularly high risk was observed in women under 55 years of age.
The increased risk of dementia was similar between continuous (daily) and cyclical (daily estrogen plus progestin for 10 to 14 days per month).
The scientists stressed that their study revealed only a correlation, not a causal relationship. Moreover, they do not exclude the possibility of a predisposition to dementia in women undergoing hormonal therapy, and the consequences are explained by this and not by the influence of hormonal drugs. For these reasons, its findings cannot be used to replace medical advice.
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