Responses to a survey of women with multiple sclerosis suggested that neither menopause nor hormone replacement therapy affected their MS symptoms.
MONTREAL—Neither menopause nor hormone replacement affects multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms in most women with the disorder, according to survey results presented at the 25th Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers.
Sex hormones are believed to play a modulating role in MS, noted Annette Wundes, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues. Thus, the researchers developed a mail survey to investigate whether menopause affects the clinical course of MS, whether symptoms of menopause are erroneously attributed to MS, and whether pharmacologic intervention affects either scenario. The survey asked women with MS about their age at menopause onset, the cause of their menopause, and their use of hormone replacement therapy. It also inquired into relationships between menopause, hormone replacement, and MS symptoms and disease course.
Of the 591 survey respondents, 316 (53%) were postmenopausal women with MS. Their ages at menopause onset ranged from 19 to 62, with a median age of 46—five years earlier than that of the general US population at menopause. Nearly half of the respondents with menopause said that it was induced iatrogenically. Most respondents with menopause reported no association between menopause and MS symptoms; those who did, however, were likely to report that menopause had worsened their symptoms.
Slightly more than 50% of the respondents reported that they had been treated with hormone replacement therapy, and the average duration of such therapy was five years. About 75% of the women who had been treated with hormone replacement therapy reported that the therapy had not affected their MS symptoms or the overall course of the disease.
“Data from two previous studies … suggesting benefits of hormone replacement therapy and worsening of MS with menopause were not confirmed in this sample,” the researchers concluded. “However, none of the questionnaires used, including our own, studies the full complexity of menopausal changes, effects of hormone replacement therapy, and natural changes of MS with aging. Further studies are warranted."
—Jack Baney