Women's health advocates have been wary of the body's reaction to hormone replacement therapy to treat menopause, but new research suggest the brain is unaffected several years after treatment, the Los Angeles Times reported.
According to research published in JAMA Internal Medicine online, a group of women were recruited at 50-years-old and given cognitive function tests when they were about 67-years-old, and tested again a year later. The women in the study had taken hormone replacement therapy or a placebo for about five years.
Seven years after the study began, the women ended their hormone doses, and researchers reportedly called participants and tested each the women's cognitive functions like verbal memory, short-term memory and attention.
Researchers say menopausal women who used the therapy early on may lower their longer-term risk of dementia. On "global cognitive function" the study found no difference between those who got the therapy and those who did not.
"Based on our data, there appears to be no harm and no benefit to women's cognition," Mark Espeland, a professor of public health at Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, told Bloomberg News.
Esperland said they are continuing to follow the participants to verify if there are any long-term cognitive problems related to hormone therapy they used and what women can do to preserve their mental health as they age. However, the findings from the recently published study are not conclusive and further research is necessary.
"These findings are still not definitive but they are certainly the best evidence yet that the negative effects on the brain of hormone therapy in older women do not extend to younger women," Francine Grodstein, an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital wrote an editorial accompanying the study in the journal. "Hormone therapy remains one of the best treatments for menopausal symptoms."
