By Paul Candon, Medical Tribune News Service
A woman's mental ability between the ages of 8 and 11 may be an
indicator of when she will reach menopause, according to
researchers in England. In a study published in Thursday's issue of
Neurology, women who had lower mental ability at ages 8 and 11 had
an earlier menopause, and those with higher abilities at those ages
experienced a later menopause. The findings indicate that
variations in early estrogen exposure may influence both cognitive
functioning and timing of menopause.
The study, headed by Dr. Marcus Richards, MRC Research Scientist
and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Royal Free and University
College Medical School at University College in London, drew its
information from long-term research that followed a group of more
than 5,000 men and women following their births in 1946.
Researchers collected information at regular intervals on these
people's health and cognitive abilities.
This study examined whether women's cognitive scores at ages 8,
11, 15 and 26 years were related to when they experienced
menopause. Earlier research had shown an association between high
cognitive ability among adolescents and late menopause. Information
from 1,572 women was assessed in the current study.
At the different age intervals, participants' verbal and
nonverbal abilities were measured using tests that involved reading
comprehension, vocabulary and mathematics.
Starting at age 47, the participants were asked to volunteer
health information, which for women included if and when menopause
had occurred. The researchers then ranked the women into three
groups (lower third, middle third, and highest third) according to
their mental ability at each age studied. Richards expected to find
an association between later age of menopause and higher mental
ability in adolescence. But he found that higher cognitive scores
at ages 8 and 11 were even more predictive of later menopause.
Twenty-six percent of women with the lowest mental ability
experienced menopause by age 50 years, while only 16 percent of
women with the highest ability had reached menopause by that time.
``What did surprise us, however,'' Richards said, ``was our finding
that childhood cognitive ability was more strongly associated with
menopause timing than was adolescent or adult ability.''
One explanation, Richards said, involves the role of estrogen.
``Loss of this hormone,'' he said, ``is a key event in menopause,
and timing of this loss may be partly controlled by the brain.
Estrogen plays a role in brain development during early life.
Cognitive performance may therefore be providing clues about
reproductive aging since it provides a crude window on the brain.''
The explanation that ``social disadvantage'' was a factor in
both low cognitive scores and risk behaviors, like smoking, that
could lead to an early menopause turned out not to be the case.
``We found the association between cognitive function and timing of
the menopause even after taking smoking and a range of other
factors into account, including occupation and education,''
Richards said.
Jacqueline Washington, assistant professor of neurology at the
Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, was not surprised
by these results. ``The relationship between estrogen and cognitive
function has been suspected in the past,'' she noted. ``Right now,
some researchers are looking into the role of estrogen in dementia,
specifically studying the prevention of Alzheimer's disease with
estrogen-replacement therapy in women. But it may be useful if
researchers can find something to help predict the timing of
menopause and possibly prevent the health risks involved.''
Most women experience menopause between the ages of 48 and 52.
The age at which women reach menopause is medically important
because an early menopause indicates a risk of osteoporosis, while
late menopause is associated with a higher risk of breast cancer.
