Menopausal hormone shifts may bring on the blues

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Menopausal hormone shifts may bring on the " blues "

Last Updated: 2004-01-21 12:36:30 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Hormone fluctuations that occur during the

transition to menopause may increase the likelihood of depressive

symptoms for some women, new study findings suggest.

Researchers found that among more than 300 women followed for four

years, the odds of feeling depressed increased as women began to go

through menopause -- the time when women begin to miss their menstrual

periods -- then went down again once they were postmenopausal.

There was also evidence that fluctuating levels of reproductive hormones

were behind this connection.

However, the study's lead author stressed that the findings suggest that

not all women, only some, might be vulnerable to the effects of hormonal

changes during the transition to menopause.

And the " up side " is that if a woman does feel down during this phase,

there is an end in sight, said Dr. Ellen W. Freeman, of the University

of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

In fact, postmenopausal women in the study, published in the January

issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, were less likely to show

depressive symptoms than were premenopausal women. The increase in

symptoms was confined to the transition to menopause.

Having depressive symptoms -- such as feeling " blue " or irritable - -is

not the same as a diagnosis of depression, and few women in the study

suffered from major depression. How menopause phase and hormone changes

might factor into major depression could not be assessed, according to

Freeman.

In addition, most of the participants, who were between the ages of 35

and 47 at the study's start, were still premenopausal or in the early

stages of the transition to menopause at the end of the four-year

follow-up. Freeman's team plans to keep following the same group to

confirm these initial findings.

Archives of General Psychiatry, January 2004.

I'll tell you where to go!

Mayo Clinic in Rochester

http://www.mayoclinic.org/rochester

s Hopkins Medicine

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org