Severe symptoms of menopause linked to dementia, study suggests

globalnews.ca:

menopause can act as early warning signs for dementia.Dr. Zahinoor Ismail, a professor of psychiatry, neurology, epidemiology and pathology at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, said the result comes from an ongoing cross-sectional study about Canadian brains and aging from CAN-PROTECT.Ismail said his initial interest in the effects of menopause was sparked years ago in his medical practice.“I remember a case from early 2001 with a woman who presented in the emergency room with a whole host of brain symptoms, both cognition and psychiatric, and it turned out she was just in early menopause,” Ismail told The Canadian Press.“So instead of treating her for these neurological and psychiatric conditions, we normalized her estrogen and her symptoms resolved.“That was the genesis of this study.”The overall study involves 2,400 people across Canada, who are asked a number of questions about their cognition, behaviour, function, health, wellness, lifestyle, diet, exercise, vitamin supplements, medications, medical and psychiatric conditions and quality of life.Data from 800 of those subjects is being used to study the effects of menopause on the brain.

A baseline paper on that data was presented at the Canadian Conference on Dementia in Toronto in November, and results are to be updated annually.“We took women who were post-menopausal and captured the number of symptoms they had during menopause … so everything from those hot flashes that people talk about, neuropsychiatric symptoms such as irritability, mood changes, anxiety and then also neurocognitive symptoms like inattention and poor memory,” he said.“I focused on the neuropsychiatric and cognitive symptoms. Because when those emerge and persist in mid-life and later, they are