Postmenopausal women ages 50 to 55 taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) will not experience memory problems or declines in their cognitive abilities, according to new research.

The study showed that postmenopausal hormone therapy with conjugated equine estrogens (CEEs) is not linked to overall sustained benefit or risk to cognitive function in women of this age group.

The therapy consists of a synthetic mixture of estrogen and is used to treat the symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes and vaginal dryness.

A previous report, the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS), found that women ages 65 and older taking postmenopausal hormone therapy with CEEs experienced deficits in global and domain-specific cognitive functioning.

The authors explained that until now, it was not known whether the treatment had the same effect on younger women.

Therefore, the new study, the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study of Younger Women (WHIMSY), analyzed whether younger postmenopausal women taking CEE-based hormone therapy resulted in longer-term influences on cognitive function.

The team of experts, led by Mark A. Espeland, Ph.D., of the Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, N.C., presented the primary results from this investigation in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The researchers said:

“Global cognitive function scores from women who had been assigned to CEE-based therapies were similar to those from women assigned to placebo. Similarly, no overall differences were found for any individual cognitive domain.”

A total of 1,326 postmenopausal women were involved in the research, they had begun treatment in two randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials of hormone therapy when aged 50 to 55 years.

These clinical trials compared 0.625mg CEE with or without 2.5mg medroxyprogesterone acetate over a mean period of seven years.

Our findings provide reassurance that CEE-based therapies when administered to women earlier in the postmenopausal period do not seem to convey long-term adverse consequences for cognitive function“, the authors said.

The experts concluded:

Although we cannot rule out acute benefits or harm, these do not appear to be present to any degree a mean of seven years after cessation of therapy. One exception may be for minor longer-term disturbances of verbal fluency for women prescribed CEE alone; however this may be a chance finding.”

A study from 2011 showed that estrogen-only HRT is less risky for younger women than it is for older females.

Written by Sarah Glynn