Estrogen Replacement Therapy Does Not Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk
Strike off yet another excuse for HRT. Want to lower your risk of Alzheimers? Identify and avoid food allergens, lower your overall inflammatory burden, maintain high intakes of fruits, vegetables and whole grains high in zinc and avoid as many sources of aluminum as you can.
Arch Neurol 2001;58:435-440 The use of estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) by postmenopausal women does not reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Dr. David A. Drachman, of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, used the General Practice research Database in the UK, which includes prescription data, to identify 112,481 postmenopausal women who used ERT and an age-matched cohort of 108,925 women who had not used ERT. From these groups they conducted a nested case-control analysis of 59 women with newly diagnosed AD and 221 matched controls. “Among the 59 newly diagnosed cases of AD, 15 (25%) were current estrogen users, while among the controls, 53 (24%) were current users,” the investigators report. After adjustment for body mass index and smoking, the odds ratio for AD in women who had used estrogen for at least 1 year was 1.18 compared with nonusers. When the authors combined past ERT users with current users, the odds ratio compared with nonusers 1.19. For those who used estrogen for at least 5 years, the odds ratio was 1.05. “Odds ratios were similar for estrogen recipients who received estrogens alone and recipients who received combined estrogen-progestin treatment,” Dr. Drachman and colleagues note.