Hormone Therapy Bad For Brain, Study Says
Study: Combination Therapy Poses Double Risk For Dementia
A new study has more bad news for women taking hormone replacement therapy.
Researchers with the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study found that women on the most common form of long-term female hormone therapy -- combined estrogen plus progestin -- have a higher risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.
The findings run counter to the idea that supplements can help women keep their minds sharp. That theory was based on smaller, less rigorous studies.
The new study, based on findings from more than 4,500 postmenopausal women 65 and older, found that women on hormones for an average of more than four years had double the risk of Alzheimer's disease or other dementia than women taking placebo pills. Translated to a population of 10,000 women taking the combined hormone therapy, there would be an additional 23 cases of dementia per year.
The study is published in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Because of the potential harm and lack of benefit found, we recommend that older postmenopausal women not take the combination hormone therapy to prevent dementia and we hope that doctors will incorporate what we've learned in their recommendations to women," said Sally Shumaker, lead researcher and a professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Earlier research had found a higher risk of breast cancer, heart attack and stroke in women on one type of hormone pill. And an outside expert said the new study is another argument against taking hormones.
Women in the study stopped taking the estrogen plus progestin therapy in July 2002, when it was found that the risks for developing breast cancer, strokes and cardiovascular disease outweighed the benefits. At that time, not all of the memory study data had been analyzed and the dementia risk had not been established.
Dementia occurs when memory, judgment and thinking ability declines to the point that it interferes with basic day-to-day activities. Alzheimer's disease was the most common form of dementia found among the study groups.
In an accompanying commentary, Dr. Christine Yaffe of the University of California at San Francisco said more than one-third of women and 20 percent of men 65 and older eventually will develop dementia. As the U.S. population ages, the number of people with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia is expected to quadruple over the next 50 years at great cost to families and society.
Another study in the same issue of the journal, conducted by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., found that healthy postmenopausal women who take the estrogen plus progestin combination are at increased risk for stroke.
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