Review:
oestrogen therapy after menopause may improve cognitive performance and may reduce the risk of developing dementia
Oestrogen therapy — Oestrogen suppresses the hormone that stimulates testosterone production
At a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington DC last week, Victor Henderson and colleagues from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, presented findings that suggest women on
oestrogen therapy are 40 per cent less likely to develop the disease than those who are not.
Not exact matches
Since 1981, members of Leisure World have been filling out questionnaires, providing information about their health and lives, including whether the women opted for
oestrogen relacement
therapy after the menopause.
Another possibility is to use refined
oestrogens that do not have the side effects of the current
therapy.
Of these variants, reported today in the journals Nature and Nature Genetics, 65 are common variants that predispose to breast cancer and a further seven predispose specifically to
oestrogen - receptor negative breast cancer - the subset of cases that do not respond to hormonal
therapies, such as the drug tamoxifen.
In a second
therapy commonly used for men with prostate cancer, doctors administer the female sex hormone
oestrogen, which counteracts the androgens.
In sub-analyses, however, there was an observable increase in risk for haemorrhagic stroke (the less common form) if the
therapy contained the active substance conjugated equine
oestrogens.
«This means that tamoxifen, which is probably the best
therapy for breast cancer available, is not working solely through blocking the
oestrogen receptors, which everyone thought it did.
There are also preventive
therapies — such as tamoxifen or the trial drug anastrazole — that interfere with the production of the hormone
oestrogen, implicated in many breast cancers.
Risk factors for developing breast cancer include: being childless or delaying childbearing until aged over 30, starting periods early, using hormone replacement
therapy, being exposed to
oestrogen - like chemicals, and drinking one or more units of alcohol daily.
My translational research has focused on trying to find better ways to estimate recurrence risk in patients diagnosed with
oestrogen - receptor positive early breast cancer, with the ultimate aim to better personalise our
therapies for those patients who have the most to gain from them.
The medical community on the other hand, considers menopause as a disorder that requires continuous treatment in the form of hormone replacement
therapy (or HRT), which involves synthetic hormones (mainly
oestrogen and progesterone), as well as other forms of medication depending on the symptoms.
Hormone replacement
therapy (HRT) is one of the best ways to at least postpone the adverse effects of reduced
oestrogen and progesterone.
Synthetic testosterone / progesterone /
oestrogen is often used for hormonal replacement
therapy and anti-conception.
Research has now shown that boron supplementation in postmenopausal women doubles the blood level of the most active form of
oestrogen, 17 - beta oestradiol, to the level found in women on
oestrogen replacement
therapy.
This hormonal replacement
therapy form, which is a combination of
oestrogen and progestin specifically called PremPro increased the risk of serious conditions, which include heart disease, stroke, blood clots, and breast cancer.
Essentially hormone replacement
therapy is a way to allow menopausal women, so women in and around their 50's start to lose their period, and start to lose their
oestrogen levels and progesterone levels start to decrease quite a bit as well.