Women's Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS) Announces Findings on Estrogen Plus Progestin Hormone Therapy, Dementia

5/22/2003

From: National Institute on Aging Press Office, 301-496-1752

News Advisory:

Rates of Dementia Increase Among Older Women on Combination Hormone Therapy

WHAT: Audio Conference Interviews -- Sally A. Shumaker, Ph.D., principal investigator, WHIMS -- Judith Salerno, M.D., deputy director, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health -- Other NIH spokespersons

WHEN: Tuesday, May 27, 11 a.m. - Noon ET

TO JOIN THE CONFERENCE CALL: PHONE 1-888-632-5950 and ask for "WHIMS audio conference" International callers: 1-713-481-1320

A rebroadcast of this conference will be available two hours after it is complete. To listen to the rebroadcast, call 1-877-519-4471 or 1-973-341-3080 and use conference No. 3951028. The rebroadcast will be available through 06-03-2003.

DETAILS: Women age 65 and older taking combination hormone therapy had twice the rate of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), compared with women who did not take the medication, according to new findings from a memory substudy of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI/ WHIMS). Women in the combined estrogen plus progestin (E(plus)P) arm of the WHI and substudies such as WHIMS are no longer taking the combination therapy as part of the research trials.

While the increased risk of dementia is significant when calculated over a large population of women, the risk to any individual older woman is actually relatively small.

The research, is reported in the May 28, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The findings are reported by WHIMS Principal Investigator, Sally A. Shumaker, Ph.D., Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem and colleagues at the 39 sites involved in the study.

The memory substudy WHIMS was funded by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, manufacturer of Prempro(tm), which it provided for use in the WHI trials. The larger WHI trials are supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the NIH. NIA has been involved in reviewing the current findings as the NIH's lead institute on age-related memory change and dementia.