ESTROGEN REPLACEMENT THERAPY AND MEMORY IN OLDER WOMEN

OBJECTIVE: To study the relationship between estrogen hormone replacem ent therapy and recall of proper names and words in cognitively intact older women. DESIGN: A case-control study using subjects matched on a ge and education. PARTICIPANTS: From a group of 278 older (age range 5 5 to 93 years) community-dwelling women volunteers for memory research , 72 older women taking estrogen replacement therapy were matched on a ge and education with a group of 72 women not taking estrogen. MEASURE MENTS: Dependent measures were performances on: a proper name recall, test and a word recall test. RESULTS: Proper name recall was significa ntly better in those receiving estrogen (mean = 4.3; SD = 3.3) than in those not receiving estrogen (mean = 3.1; SD = 2.5), P = 0.01. There was also significantly greater variance in the name recall scores of t he group taking estrogen than in the group not taking estrogen. For wo rd recall, there was no significant difference between those subjects taking estrogen (mean = 6.4; SD 3.8) and those not taking estrogen (me an 5.8; SD 3.7), P > 0.10. CONCLUSIONS: Estrogen use was associated wi th enhanced recall of proper names. Previous failures to find differen ces associated with estrogen use may reflect the memory measures used or an increased inter-individual variability of the estrogen-taking gr oup, as was observed in the present study. Interpretation of these res ults should be tempered by their retrospective nature.