Cognition

Normal cognition can also be affected by the estrogen loss associated with menopause. The most common complaints are memory loss and difficulty in concentrating. The first reports of estrogen benefiting cognition demonstrated that estrogen plays an important role in the maintenance of short-term memory in women.(8) The study shown in Figure 1 involved surgically menopausal women who were tested on immediate paragraph recall, which is considered a measure of short-term memory.(9) Estrogen treatment after surgery produced higher scores than did placebo.

Figure 1

A recent study, however, found that the benefits of estrogen extend beyond the domain of verbal memory. Cognitive performance was evaluated among 727 healthy menopausal women.(10) The women who used estrogen scored higher on standardized tests of memory (shown in Figure 2), language, and abstract reasoning at baseline, and their verbal memory performance improved slightly at the end of 2.5 years' follow-up. These findings were independent of ethnicity, education, and age, and apolipoprotein E status (a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease).

Figure 2