Study links estrogen therapy to lower odds of Alzheimer’s, dementia

A new Stanford Medicine study suggests that estrogen-only menopausal hormone therapy may be associated with better brain health in older women. The study, published in the journal Neurology, finds that women who used estrogen-only therapy had 35% lower odds of Alzheimer’s-related pathology as determined during an autopsy. Researchers also found that the odds of a clinical dementia diagnosis dropped by 39%. “MHT appears to exert a modest but meaningful and statistically significant protective effect,” says Jennifer Bruno, PhD, a Stanford instructor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences. Researchers caution, however, that the study was observational in nature and didn’t conclusively prove that estrogen prevents Alzheimer’s, and that it examined estrogen-only therapy and not estrogen-progestin combinations.