Hormone therapy may prove memorable.Hormone-replacement treatment appears to protect healthy older women from verbal-memory losses that typically accompany aging, a new study finds. However, this estrogen and progesterone progesterone (prōjĕs`tərōn'), female sex hormone that induces secretory changes in the lining of the uterus essential for successful implantation of a fertilized egg. therapy confers no benefit to the women on tests of attention, visualizing items in space, and memory for pictures and quantities, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a report in the February AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY The American Journal of Psychiatry (AJP) is the most widely read psychiatric journal in the world. It covers topics on biological psychiatry, treatment innovations, forensic, ethical, economic, and social issues. . Earlier investigations that asked whether hormone-replacement treatment boosts memory and thinking in healthy women after menopause yielded mixed results. In part, the confusion may result because women who elect to receive hormone therapy Hormone therapy Treating cancers by changing the hormone balance of the body, instead of by using cell-killing drugs. Mentioned in: Breast Cancer, Thyroid Cancer hormone therapy are often healthier and better educated than those who don't. So, hormone recipients may start out with a cognitive advantage. Psychologist Pauline M. Maki of the National Institute on Aging The National Institute on Aging is a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland. Formed in 1974, NIA's mission is to improve the health and well-being of older Americans through research. It is the primary U.S. in Baltimore and her colleagues avoided this problem by studying only women who had comparably high levels of physical health, education, income, and verbal ability. The women, between 50 and 89 years old, all had been through menopause. The researchers gave cognitive tests Cognitive tests are assessments of the cognitive capabilities of humans and animals. Tests administered to humans include various forms of IQ tests; those administered to animals include the mirror test (a test of self-awareness) and the T maze test (which tests learning ability). to 81 women who had never received hormones and 103 women who had received estrogen-replacement therapy, sometimes with progesterone, for periods of 6 months to more than 20 years. Women who had taken estrogen for 6 months to 1 year performed as well on a verbal-memory test as did those who had undergone much longer courses of therapy, Maki says. They all outperformed those with no hormone treatment. Her team has now launched a 6-year study of memory and thinking skills among more than 2,000 healthy postmenopausal post·men·o·paus·al adj. Of or occurring in the time following menopause. postmenopausal Change of life Gynecology adjective Referring to the time in ♀ when menstrual periods stop for ≥ 1 yr women, some of whom are receiving hormone therapy. Scientists who pursue such research should avoid the stereotype of menopause as a deficiency that requires medical treatment, remarks psychiatrist Nada L. Stotland of Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago in an editorial accompanying the research report. Instead, menopause initiates a healthy developmental phase, she says. For tens of thousands of years, some women in hunter-gatherer groups performed vital roles into their seventies without hormone therapy, she points out. |
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