Menopause is a time of very significant physiological changes in women’s bodies, affecting many different areas and systems. For this reason, it is also a period in which the risk of developing certain pathological processes chronic type.
Early menopause is associated with increased risk
In this sense, a new study carried out by researchers from the Mass General Brigham Hospital has recently provided solid evidence of a phenomenon to which a certain volume of previous research had already pointed: that the early age of menopause can be a risk factor for the development of Alzheimer’s. And not only that, but this work also offers a solution to the problem: the authors have found that in all women who were prescribed hormone therapy at the onset of early menopause this increased risk was significantly mitigated.
The finding is based on the analysis of data from 193 post-menopausal women and 99 men with no history of cognitive dysfunction. Specifically, these researchers took into account images taken by positron emission tomography and information on the age of onset of menopause and, where appropriate, hormone treatments.
As reported in the scientific environment JAMA Neurologyat a general level, women showed higher levels of tau and beta-amyloid proteins (characteristic markers of Alzheimer’s. This, they say, was to be expected, since women are much more likely than men to develop the disease.
The protective potential of hormonal therapies
Within women, the highest levels were observed in those who had had an earlier age of onset of menopauseeven after adjusting for other factors such as genetic risk, smoking, or surgical removal of the ovaries.
This relationship, however, disappeared in those women who, despite their early menopause, had started with a hormone therapy shortly after experiencing the change.
All this seems to indicate that the hormonal changes associated with the menopause, when they occur at an early age, could contribute to the Alzheimer’s pathogenesis and that, on the other hand, the hormonal treatment shortly after these changes would act by ‘correcting’ this relationship.
The findings cannot be immediately extrapolated to the clinic, but will need to be further investigated in depth before being able to imply a change in clinical practice regarding hormonal treatments in postmenopausal women. However, they represent promising evidence about the protective potential that this type of therapy can have against a neurodegenerative disease as serious as Alzheimer’s.
References
Gillian T. Coughlan, Tobey J. betthauser, Rory Boyle et al. Association of Age at Menopause and Hormone Therapy Use With Tau and β-Amyloid Positron Emission Tomography. JAMA Neurology (2023). DOI:10.1001/jamaneurol.2023.0455