Estrogen Therapy for Memory Loss
In a study that used the cholinergic medication tacrine (Cognex) to treat Alzheimer’s disease, an incidental result was that women who also took estrogen were the patients most likely to improve cognitively with tacrine. This intriguing result suggests that estrogen may be particularly effective when used in combination with other medications.
Recent studies suggest that estrogen by itself is not an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. However, other studies show that estrogen may slightly enhance memory performance in postmenopausal women who do not suffer from memory loss. My view is that estrogen may be particularly effective in women who have symptoms of both depression and cognitive impairment. This dovetails perfectly into the differences that I observed between the two sisters, with Cynthia suffering from mild depression and mild memory loss while Myra had neither syndrome and took estrogen.
Recently, several large-scale studies, including the Women’s Health Initiative under the auspices of the NIH, have been launched to evaluate the direct effect of estrogen in preventing and treating mild
memory loss. This massive investment means that it is likely that our knowledge about the effects of estrogen on memory will leapfrog over all the other promemory medications in the coming years.
How about a Male Estrogen?
How about a male estrogen to prevent not only memory loss but also heart attacks and strokes that are more common in men than in women? There is work afoot to try to develop compounds that retain many of the properties of estrogen without producing its feminizing effects such as changes in breast size and other physical features. The antiosteoporosis medication raloxifene (Evista), which some have informally labeled as estrogen-light, has fewer feminizing properties than regular estrogen, but it is still not suitable for use by men. A recent study in women showed that Evista was much less likely to lead to breast cancer than estrogen, and this compound may be worth testing in women with mild memory loss.
The irony about estrogen is that it is a steroid, as is the male hormone, testosterone. Corticosteroids are thought to damage hippocampal cells, but sex hormone steroids may actually protect the same cells. Testosterone therapy in men has not been studied as much as estrogen in women for a couple of reasons: a high risk of prostate cancer, and the need to give testosterone by injection rather than orally. Since more and more researchers are taking an interest in sex hormones
and related compounds, male sex hormone therapy to prevent memory loss, and perhaps depression, may make its debut in the future.
Taken From: The Memory Program How to Prevent Memory Loss
and Enhance Memory Power
This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 2:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
