"We viewed the availability of hormone levels as an opportunity to test one aspect of the critical-window hypothesis — especially since we had two fairly large samples of women," Henderson said.
Based on the critical-window theory, along with results of past animal studies showing that the timing of estradiol replacement affects memory, Henderson said he and his colleagues had hypothesized that higher levels of estradiol would be positively associated with memory performance in women who had experienced menopause more recently but not those who had experienced it longer ago. "Instead, we found no significant link — positive or negative — in either group," he said.
Henderson added that the findings don’t "necessarily mean that estrogens are irrelevant to cognition, since we have no way of measuring estrogen directly at the brain level. But they imply that boosting blood levels of estradiol or estrone — even in younger postmenopausal women — may not have a substantial effect on cognitive skills one way or the other."
Other hormone levels were unrelated to verbal memory, executive function or overall cognition, or to mood, the researchers found, with one exception: Higher progesterone levels in younger postmenopausal women were positively associated with better memory and global cognition.
"This finding has not been previously reported and needs to be confirmed," Henderson added.
The study's strengths, the authors wrote, include "the large sample size for both early and late postmenopausal women, the examination of multiple sex hormones in the same population, and the use of a comprehensive neuropsychological battery that allowed for the assessment of different cognitive domains."
Henderson’s co-authors are at the University of Southern California, including Wendy Mack, PhD, professor of biostatistics, and Howard Hodis, MD, professor of medicine.
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