Effects of hormone replacement therapy on cognitive performance in elderly women
Objective: To determine the effects of 9 months of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on cognitive performance in women aged 75 years and older. Methods: A 9-month randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled parallel trial. Fifty-two elderly postmenopausal women (age range 75–91 years) without kno...
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Published in | Maturitas Vol. 38; no. 2; pp. 137 - 146 |
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Main Authors | , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Shannon
Elsevier Ireland Ltd
20.04.2001
Elsevier Science |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Objective: To determine the effects of 9 months of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on cognitive performance in women aged 75 years and older.
Methods: A 9-month randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled parallel trial. Fifty-two elderly postmenopausal women (age range 75–91 years) without known contraindications to HRT or evidence of dementia or depression were enrolled. Participants were randomly assigned in a 1:2 ratio to placebo or conjugated estrogens at 0.625 mg/d plus trimonthly medroxyprogesterone acetate at 5 mg/d for 13 days (HRT). Main outcome measures were change from baseline and rate of change from baseline for the following psychometric tests: Verbal Fluency Test, Weschler Paired Associate Learning and 20 min Delayed Recall, Trailmaking A and B Tests, Cancellation Random Letter and Random Form Tests.
Results: At baseline, women in the HRT group reported a younger age of onset of menopause and a higher prevalence of hysterectomy, but otherwise did not differ from women in the placebo group. After 9 months of treatment, there were no significant group differences for any of the cognitive performance measures. The lack of an observed group-by-time difference for all cognitive tests remained after controlling for age of onset of menopause, education, and previous hysterectomy.
Conclusions: Although conclusions are limited by small sample size and the relatively short duration of treatment, results suggest that 9 months of estrogen replacement in combination with trimonthly progestin does not improve cognitive performance in women over 75 years who do not have dementia or depression. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 ObjectType-News-3 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0378-5122 1873-4111 |
DOI: | 10.1016/S0378-5122(00)00214-0 |