Estrogen Use Before Age 65 May Cut Alzheimer’s Risk in Half

Risk nearly doubles for senior women starting estrogen-plus-progestin hormone therapy

May 3, 2007 - Women who use hormone therapy before the age of 65 could cut their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. The study found women who used any form of estrogen hormone therapy before the age of 65 were nearly 50 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or dementia than women who did not use hormone therapy before age 65.

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Women who began estrogen-only therapy after the age of 65 had roughly a 50-percent increased risk of developing dementia. The risk jumped to nearly double for women using estrogen-plus-progestin hormone therapy.

This possibility is raised by research presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 59th Annual Meeting in Boston, yesterday.

The study was part of the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study, which is a sub-study of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), one of the largest U.S. prevention studies of postmenopausal women. The study looked at prior hormone use in 7,153 healthy women ages 65-79 before they enrolled in the WHI Memory Study. Researchers followed the women’s cognitive health over an average of five years.

In that time, 106 of the women developed Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. Dementia is a general term referring to the progressive decline in a person’s cognitive function. Dementia can affect memory, attention, language and problem solving abilities. Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia.

Prior studies have shown that hormone therapy started during the WHI Memory Study increased a woman’s chance of dementia. The reduced risk of dementia was seen only with prior hormone therapy, used before study enrollment. Reduced risk was not affected by other examined factors.

“We found that it didn’t matter how old the woman was when she started hormone therapy, how long or recently she took it or what kind of prior therapy she used,” said study author Victor W. Henderson, MD, of Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, and Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.

“Further studies are needed to support these findings and learn more about how hormone therapy affects the long-term cognitive health of women who begin use before age 65,” said Henderson.

The National Institutes of Health and Wyeth funded the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study.

The American Academy of Neurology, an association of over 20,000 neurologists and neuroscience professionals, is dedicated to improving patient care through education and research. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke.

For more information about the American Academy of Neurology, visit http://www.aan.com.

Prior Studies on When to Take Hormone Replacement

Hormone replacement best for blood pressure if taken within five years of menopause

March 2001 - Hormone replacement therapy may be most effective in lowering the risk of hypertensive heart disease if begun in the first five years after menopause, according to a new study. The heart condition is tied to high blood pressure. Click to external news release.

Hormone replacement therapy does not affect stroke risk, UCSF/SFVAMC study finds

Feb. 2001 - Hormone replacement therapy with estrogen and progestin does not affect risk of stroke in postmenopausal women with heart disease, according to a large clinical trial published by researchers at University of California, San Francisco and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Hormone therapy neither increased nor decreased the risk of stroke among these women, nor did it affect their risk of a transient ischemic attack (TIA), a blood clot in the brain that causes temporary stroke symptoms. Click to external news release.