New study shows menopause linked to changes in brain gray matter
Changes in the brain during menopause may help explain why some people experience neurological symptoms such as anxiety, depression and memory problems.
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Everyone who menstruates and lives long experiences some form of menopause. Yet despite this, research on what happens and why during this natural cessation of menstruation is limited. Scientists know that menopause can cause Myriad neurological symptoms, ranging from hot flashes to poor sleep to depression. But what is going on in people’s minds during this time is still unclear. Now new research Provides clues to the connection between menopause and changes in the brain’s gray matter, as well as anxiety and depression.
Using brain scans of 10,873 people in the UK, researchers found that postmenopausal participants showed reduced amounts of gray matter in the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, which are involved in storing and retrieving memories, and in the anterior cingulate, which is involved in emotional regulation.
Researchers also looked at whether hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a Frontline but still rarely scheduled Treating menopause symptoms may improve some of these changes.
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Barbara Sahakian, psychiatry professor at the University of Cambridge and author of the study, explains that she and her colleagues theorized that HRT could affect people’s experiences, for example by reducing their neurological symptoms. “That was the hypothesis,” she says, “but it didn’t quite pan out that way.”
They found that people who were treated with HRT for menopause had less gray matter volume in certain brain areas than people who did not receive HRT. The HRT group also showed higher rates of anxiety and depression — importantly, Sahakian says their work did not show that HRT treatment caused changes in the brain or menopause symptoms. Previous research suggests that HRT prescribed before menopause and during early postmenopause may reduce anxiety in at least some women, depending on the type and dosage of HRT. And subsequent analysis found that participants who were prescribed HRT were more likely to report anxiety and depression than before HRT treatment, the study states.
It’s not clear what type of hormone therapy the participants received, says Roberta Brinton, director of the Center for Innovation in Brain Science at the University of Arizona, who was not involved in the study. “The type and treatment of menopausal hormone therapy is an important factor in the efficacy, or lack thereof, for neurological (and) brain-related functions,” she says.
Sahakian and his colleagues did not have access to the participants’ treatment regimens or what doses of HRT they were taking, which could also have skewed the findings. “Those are good questions,” he agrees. “They are important. But I think the basic findings still hold, independent of this.”
One potential benefit of HRT that emerged from the data was its beneficial effect on psychomotor slowing, or the tendency for reaction times to slow with age. Without HRT, postmenopausal women had slower responses than premenopausal women in a card-matching speed game. But the participants in the study who were treated with HRT had the same response time as participants who had not gone through menopause.
“This suggests that HRT may be protective against psychomotor slow postmenopause,” says Sahakian.
They hope the results will serve as a basis for future studies on the brain and aging, including the potential role of menopause in Alzheimer’s syndrome and dementia. Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than men, although Not entirely clear why. Women’s tendency to live longer may play a role, but a growing number of researchers, including Sahakian, wonder whether menopause may also play a role. In fact, the brain regions chosen in this study are also those often affected by Alzheimer’s disease.
The next step will be to look more deeply at what’s happening in the brains of study participants and figure out what, exactly, is causing the reduction in brain volume — whether it’s stress, hormones, or something else.
In the meantime, Sahakian advises people who are experiencing menopause to focus on behaviors that are known to improve brain health — exercising, getting good sleep, keeping your brain active, eating healthy, and maintaining positive social networks.
“If women try to do those things, especially during menopause, it will put them in the best possible position to recover from it,” she says.
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