What is it about?
Postmenopausal hormone therapy reduce mainly vascular dementia mortality risk (up to 39%) and only slightly Alzheimer's death risk in our large Nationwide study with almost half a miillion women. Furthermore, since vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease share common risk factors, it is possible that the slight risk reduction in Alzheimer's disease in our study is associated with the reduced vascular dementia risk due to the use of postmenopausal hormone therapy.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Association of postmenopausal hormone therapy and dementia risk has remained controversial. Our study is one of the largest population based study where we used highly reliable Nationwide registers from Finland (mandatory Medical Reimbursement register, Hospital Discharge register and Causes of Death register). Furthermore, we were able to reliably compare vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease risks among women with exactly known postmenopausal hormone therpy use.
Perspectives
Our study provide important new information when counseling women about postmenopausal hormone therpay and dementia. Perhaps the key message to women about their cognitive health is to optimize cardiovascular health, e.g. heart health is brain health as well. Our data also support the previous findings that vascular risk factors at midlife predict dementia risk several decades later.
MD Tomi S Mikkola
Helsingin Yliopisto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Lower Death Risk for Vascular Dementia than for Alzheimer’s Disease with Postmenopausal Hormone Therapy Users, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, December 2016, Endocrine Society,
DOI: 10.1210/jc.2016-3590.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
