At the start of the study, the participants were all at least 70 years old and free of Alzheimer’s. The researchers interviewed them about their estrogen use, then examined them periodically for dementia. Of the 968 women who had never taken the hormone, 16 percent developed Alzheimer’s during the study. By contrast, the disease struck only 6 percent of the 156 participants who had used estrogen at least briefly – and only 2 percent of the 58 who had used it for more than a year. No one knows how sex hormones affect Alzheimer’s risk in men (the lack of a male menopause could help explain why men enjoy lower rates than women). And experts won’t recommend estrogen specifically for Alzheimer’s prevention before testing it in controlled clinical trials. But the hormone has well-known benefits for women’s hearts and bones, and the new findings suggest they’ll soon have one more reason to take it.
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