Hormone Therapy May Help Cognition, Memory : Three new studies suggest it may have possible benefits, in contrast to results of past trials.

She then examined hormone use by baseline dementia ratings. Women were split into “higher functioning” (mean dementia rating score 68) or “lower functioning” (mean dementia rating score 120).

Among the higher-functioning group, 45% were past hormone therapy users, 45% were current users, and 10% were never-users. Among the lower-functioning group, 25% were past users, 35% were current users, and 40% were never-users.

“The length of illness was similar among women in the higher group, suggesting that there is less of a decline in cognitive functioning in the hormone therapy users.”

Dr. Dassel's colleague, Leslie Baxter, Ph.D., presented a study suggesting that hormone therapy also boosts hippocampal activity and might contribute to the persistent differences in memory between men and women as they age.

Dr. Baxter's study comprised 66 postmenopausal women and 37 men aged 50–87 years, all of whom underwent memory testing and functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain. Again, the women were divided into groups according to their hormone therapy use: never-users (16), discontinuous users (34), and continuous users (16).

There were no between-group differences in age or education. All of these subjects underwent memory testing with the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test's total learning and delayed recall tests, and functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain.

Discontinuous hormone therapy users scored significantly better than men did on all the memory tests. A nonsignificant performance trend also emerged, with discontinuous hormone therapy users performing better than continuous users, continuous users performing better than nonusers, and nonusers performing better than men.

Functional MRI showed that during a memory test (a novelty vs. familiar paradigm), the discontinuous hormone therapy users and men had significantly greater hippocampal activity than the never-users. Continuous users also had higher hippocampal activity than never-users, although not significantly so.

The researchers couldn't draw any conclusions about a definitive time frame during which hormone therapy use was associated with better memory, either in terms of duration of use or in the time of initiation. But, they said, “Both cognitive and … hippocampal integrity measures suggest that women benefited from hormone therapy at any point during menopause—not necessarily continuously—and that it helped preserve the sex difference in memory.”

None of the researchers identified any potential conflicts of interest.

A graphic representation shows increased hippocampal activity in discontinuous HT users during a memory task. Images courtesy Dr. Kara Bottiggi Dassel