A study from Denmark shows that women using hormone therapy around menopause might have a higher chance of getting dementia.
This article will break down these findings in plain English. We will also touch on what hormone therapy is and why some women use it.
What is Menopause and Hormone Therapy?
When a woman reaches a certain age, her body goes through a change called menopause.
Menopause can lead to uncomfortable symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats. To help with these symptoms, some women use hormone therapy.
Hormone therapy, also known as HRT, involves taking medicines that contain hormones. Some types of hormone therapy use estrogen only, while others combine estrogen with another hormone called progestogen.
These medicines can come in different forms, like tablets, skin patches, creams, and gels.
Hormone Therapy and Dementia
Dementia is a disease that affects the brain, making it hard for people to remember things, think clearly, or take care of themselves. Alzheimer’s disease is a common type of dementia.
Earlier large studies have suggested that long-term use of hormone therapy can increase the chance of getting dementia.
But until now, it was unclear whether this was also true for women who used hormone therapy for a shorter time around menopause, which is often advised by doctors.
The Danish Study
To better understand this, a team of researchers in Denmark conducted a large study.
They looked at the health records of all Danish women aged 50–60 years in 2000 who didn’t have dementia or any other reason stopping them from using hormone therapy.
They identified 5,589 women who developed dementia and compared them with 55,890 women who didn’t have dementia.
The researchers considered other factors that might affect dementia risk, such as education level, income, and other health conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and thyroid disease.
Findings of the Study
On average, the women in the study were diagnosed with dementia around the age of 70.
The researchers found that women who had taken a combination of estrogen and progestogen were more likely to develop dementia compared to women who had never used hormone therapy.
This increased chance of getting dementia was seen even in women who started treatment at 55 or younger.
The risk of getting dementia also increased with longer use of hormone therapy, with the highest risk seen in women who had used it for more than 12 years.
It’s important to note that using progestogen alone or estrogen alone in the form of a vaginal cream was not linked to a higher chance of dementia.
Limitations of the Study
The researchers pointed out that their study has some limits.
For instance, they couldn’t tell whether the hormone therapy directly caused dementia, or whether women using hormone therapy were already more likely to develop dementia for some other reason.
The study also didn’t distinguish between different forms of dementia or ways of taking hormone therapy, like tablets or patches.
Moreover, they couldn’t rule out that women with more menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats are more likely to develop dementia.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Despite these limits, the study is important because it uses high-quality data from a large number of women. It also looked at different hormone formulations, ages of starting therapy, and lengths of treatment.
The researchers concluded that more studies are needed to confirm these findings. They want to understand whether hormone therapy itself increases the risk of dementia, or if there are other factors at play.
In a related article, other researchers agreed that more study is needed. They noted that these findings should not be used to make decisions about hormone therapy use.
If you care about dementia, please read studies about Vitamin B9 deficiency linked to higher dementia risk, and flavonoid-rich foods could help prevent dementia.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies that cranberries could help boost memory, and how alcohol, coffee, and tea intake influence cognitive decline.
The study was published in The BMJ.
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