Estrogen - Possible Protective Factors: Alzheimers

Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School

Estrogen

For many years, doctors believed that hormone therapy during and after menopause might protect women from Alzheimer's disease: A handful of studies suggested that women who took estrogen were less likely to develop this type of dementia than those who didn't take supplementary hormones. But a large clinical trial, the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS), challenged this longstanding dogma.

WHIMS researchers reported in 2003 that women who took combination estrogen-progestin therapy were twice as likely to develop dementia as women who did not use hormones. The following year, the researchers revealed that estrogen therapy by itself also increased the risk. This study and others also found that women as young as 50 who used estrogen therapy, with and without progestin, were more likely to have strokes, which can cause dementia. As a result of such findings, menopausal hormone therapies now carry warning labels stating that they increase the risk of dementia.

Despite the negative findings about hormone therapy as a preventive measure, some early evidence suggests that hormone therapy or estrogen-like medications may somewhat improve memory and other cognitive functions in women with Alzheimer's disease (see "Estrogen therapy").

Last updated:	January 23, 2007