Women with naturally high levels of estrogen - especially those who are diabetic - are at risk for dementia, according to a study of 5,644 post-menopausal women published Jan. 29 in the journal Neurology.
Even though the female hormone estrogen keeps a woman's sex drive humming and her menstrual cycles regular, French researchers have found that the risk for dementia more than doubled for women over the age of 65 who had high estrogen levels, Yahoo Shine reported.
"For diabetic women, the risk of dementia increased 14-fold," according to Yahoo Shine. "Scientists measured the women's blood levels of estrogen and then checked them again four years later, comparing the estrogen levels they had observed in 543 women without dementia with those in 132 women who had been diagnosed with it."
Usually around age 50, estrogen therapy is a medicine that replaces the female hormones that the body stops making after women reach menopause.
Even though estrogen therapy has been long been hailed for soothing the symptoms of menopause, there's still been debate in the science world in regard to its safety
"In 2002, the National Institutes of Health released a 15-year study of post-menopausal women enrolled in clinical trials of hormone therapy and found that a combination of estrogen and progestin increased the risk of heart disease, breast cancer, stroke, and blood clots," Yahoo Shine reported.
Despite researchers' claims that the study results don't apply to women who had have hysterectomies (a surgery that can often jumpstart the process of menopause), women feared turning to estrogen therapy to relieve their symptoms after undergoing hysterectomies.
"We don't have hard numbers on how many women take estrogen therapy; however, the National Institutes of Health study scared many from taking it," Jazmin Acosta, a neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic, tells Yahoo Shine. "Although that's starting to change."
Scientists are now studying how estrogen affects cognitive function and some medical experts are discouraging patients from taking it as a supplement because of findings linking the hormone to cancer and blood clots, according to a story published by Bloomberg News.
Although Yahoo Shine could not reach the study authors for comment, lead study researcher Pierre-Yves Scarabin, director of research at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Villejuif, France, told Bloomberg.com in an email, "This study, together with other current data, challenge this dogma that the hormone is beneficial. Mechanisms underlying this association remain to be clarified."
The results aren't that clear-cut, according to Acosta.
"Estrogen is composed of both estradiol, which is good for cognition, and estron, which is harmful to cognition. So while the women in the study may have had high estrogen levels as a whole, the French researchers didn't look at specifics," she says. "The study found an association; however, it's tough to directly say that high estrogen levels cause dementia."
If you're concerned about the effects of estrogen, of course your best bet is to talk to your doctor, according to Yahoo Shine.
"We do know that women benefit from taking estrogen replacement therapy the earlier they take it," said Acosta. "However, it's still an evolving field of science that we're learning about."
