Appolonia Adeyemi A new international study led by the University of Galway, Ireland, has found that entering menopause at an earlier age is associated with an increased risk of dementia.
Results of the study are published today in the ‘Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease’. The research also showed that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after menopause appears to be associated with a reduced risk of dementia.
The research team from University of Galway and Boston University in the United States carried out the study with 1,329 cognitively healthy women from The Framingham Heart Study— the world’s longest running longitudinal cohort study—to analyse the association between reproductive factors and markers of brain ageing.
It found that entering menopause at an earlier age is associated with an increased risk of dementia. HRT after menopause appears to be associated with a reduced risk of dementia. Greater exposure to estrogen over the reproductive lifespan was associated with enhanced cognitive performance and larger brain volumes.
