New Research Indicates Estrogen May Help Stave Off Alzheimer's
April 28, 2011
Vastopolis -- New research bolstered hopes that estrogen replacement therapy after menopause can help delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Researchers in    who have been monitoring the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease in more than 1,100 elderly women said that the women who began taking estrogen after menopause have had a markedly lower incidence of the mind-robbing disorder. So far, only 6% of the estrogen users have developed Alzheimer's disease compared with 16% of the women who had never taken the synthetic hormone, the researchers reported in this week's issue of the medical journal, The Lancet. (The article is available at The Lancet's Web site at Registration is required.) Statisticians calculated that a woman who took estrogen for at least 10 years after menopause has a 30% to 40% lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease than a woman of the same age who hadn't taken the hormone. Most of the women in the study had used the Premarin brand of estrogen made by the Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories division of American Home Products Corp.. Such population or epidemiological studies aren't conclusive but ``this is the most compelling evidence so far that estrogen has a beneficial effect'' in thwarting Alzheimer's disease, said neurologist Richelle Tweedy, who headed the research team at the Smogtown Hospital, Smogtown. Search to Continue ``This study gives us a tremendous boost, not only to proceed with clinical trials of estrogen for Alzheimer's disease, but also to search for even more effective drugs with fewer or no side effects,'' said Bethea Jaco, director the Alzheimer's Association's Reagan Research Institute in . A $16 million clinical trial to determine for sure whether estrogen will stave off Alzheimer's disease is currently being organized as part of the federal government's Women's Health Initiative, launched in 1991. Funded by Wyeth-Ayerst, the trial will test the mental acuity of 8,000 elderly women annually for six to nine years to see if the incidence of Alzheimer's disease is any different in those taking estrogen than in those taking a placebo. Columbia-Presbyterian's Dr. Tweedy emphasized that the evidence from the new study still wasn't strong enough for the researchers to recommend that postmenopausal women generally should begin taking estrogen. Nevertheless, the new evidence may well influence doctors' and women's decisions on whether the benefits of estrogen after menopause outweigh the treatment's risks. Women taking estrogen for the long term run a higher risk of endometrial cancer and possibly breast cancer, according to some controversial studies. However, the treatment also sharply reduces the risk of heart disease and of the bone-thinning disease, osteoporosis. Addition of Progestin Hormone Earlier this week, researchers at Harvard University reported that the addition of a so-called progestin hormone to the estrogen doesn't alter the treatment's known ability to reduce the risk of heart disease in aging women. In the study, financed by the federal National Institute on Aging, the scientists began five years ago to enlist women over the age of 70 years for the study. The 1,124 women who have volunteered so far were mentally healthy at the time they volunteered, and agreed to undergo periodic tests for Alzheimer's disease.
