Polycystic ovary syndrome may cause dementia-like symptoms in middle-aged women, research suggests
Women with polycystic ovary syndrome may be vulnerable to cognitive problems later in life, a new study shows.
Research published in the journal Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, has found that people who suffer from the hormonal condition are more likely to develop memory and thinking problems in middle age.
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal imbalance that affects between eight and fifteen percent of women of childbearing age in the US. It causes the ovaries to produce excessive amounts of the male sex hormone androgen due to cysts that form along the outer edges of the organ.
This results in an irregular menstrual cycle, ovarian cysts and an excess of male sex hormones, which can cause abnormal hair growth.
Researchers from California, Michigan, Tennessee and Maryland followed 907 women between the ages of 18 and 30 at the start of the study for 30 years.
At the end of the 30 years, they completed tests measuring memory, verbal skills, processing speed and attention. At the time of testing, 66 women had PCOS.
Study author Dr. Heather Huddleston from the University of California, San Francisco, said: ‘While (PCOS) has been linked to metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes that can lead to heart problems, less is known about how this condition affects brain health.
‘Our results suggest that people with this condition have lower memory and thinking skills and subtle brain changes in middle age. This can affect a person on many levels, including quality of life, career success and financial security.”
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal imbalance that affects between eight and fifteen percent of women of childbearing age in the US
The authors emphasized that their findings do not prove that PCOS causes cognitive decline, only that there is a link.
To measure attention, participants completed a Stroop test, in which they looked at a list of words in different colors and tried to name the color of the word instead of reading what the word said.
The results showed that people with PCOS had an average score that was 11 percent lower than women without the condition.
Another test to measure processing speed, the digit substitution test, tracked how quickly participants could remember a series of numbers that corresponded to symbols and reproduce the series accurately.
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment tested for cognitive decline by having participants complete a series of drawings.
Verbal memory was tested using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which measures the ability to remember and retrieve words after 10 minutes.
The fifth test measured verbal fluency using category and letter fluency tests, where women were asked to name as many unique words as possible within a specific category or starting with a specific letter.
After adjusting for age, race and education, people with PCOS had lower scores than women without PCOS on three of the five tests researchers administered, specifically on tests measuring memory, attention and verbal skills.
A smaller group of 300 women had a brain scan at the ages of 25 and 30, 25 of whom had PCOS. In the scans, researchers analyzed the composition of white matter tracts in the brain by looking at how water molecules moved in brain tissue.
Brain white matter is found in the deeper tissues of the brain and contains nerve fibers, which are extensions of neurons.
White matter plays a crucial role in helping the body process information. It connects parts of the brain that send and receive signals, affecting the ability to concentrate and learn, solve problems and stay balanced while walking.
When examining the participants’ brain scans, researchers noted that the white matter in people with PCOS was not as healthy as the matter in people without the hormonal condition, which could indicate early evidence of brain aging.
Huddleston said: ‘Additional research is needed to confirm these findings and determine how this change occurs, including looking at changes people can make to reduce their chances of developing thinking and memory problems.
‘Making changes, such as incorporating more cardiovascular exercise and improving mental health, may also improve brain aging for this population.’