The relationship between menopausal status, phase of menstrual cycle, and replacement estrogen on cognition in healthy women without dementia

The authors examined the effect of menopausal status on several aspects of cognition in 4 groups of women (young premenopausal women, middle-aged premenopausal women, naturally postmenopausal women not using hormone therapy, and postmenopausal women using hormone replacement therapy). Participants (N = 48) completed questionnaires designed to assess psychological and physical health. The authors administered a test battery consisting of 10 neuropsychological tests to assess cognitive functioning. Using multivariate analyses of covariance with age as the covariate, the authors found a significant main effect of menopausal status on attention and complex processing abilities. Postmenopausal women using hormone replacement therapy significantly outperformed postmenopausal women not using hormone therapy on the Trail Making Test, Part B of the Halstead-Reitan (R. M. Reitan, 1958). This effect was significant even when the authors controlled for the effects of age, vocabulary levels, and education. Results are consistent with previous findings and may provide further evidence for an ameliorative effect of estrogen replacement therapy on specific cognitive functions.