Postmenopausal Women Who Use Hormone Therapy Biologically Younger

hormone therapy © Vitalii Vodolazskyi - stock.adobe.com

Postmenopausal women on hormone therapy were biologically younger than women not on hormone therapy, the results of a new study published late last month in JAMA Network Open show. The study also shows that women from lower socioeconomic backgrounds benefitted especially. This is the first study to examine the relationship between the timing of hormone therapy and biological age, which is calculated by comparing a person’s mortality risk to others of the same sex.

Socioeconomic status was determined by measuring education level, family income and occupation. In this study, women with a lower socioeconomic status had a larger aging discrepancy no matter their hormone therapy use. For example, among participants who had completed higher education, women who never used hormone therapy and women who used hormone therapy had discrepancies between biological and chronological age of 5.03 years and 4.95 years.

Co-lead authors Yufan Liu, from Capital Medical University in Beijing and Chenglong Li, Ph.D., from Peking University in Beijing gathered data from 2006 to 2010 of 117,763 postmenopausal women using the UK Biobank. The median chronological age of this population was 60 years old.

Researchers noticed a smaller discrepancy between chronological age and biological age (0.25 years) in women who had taken hormone therapy for four to eight years, which translates to a 2.25% decrease in all-risk mortality. The benefits of hormone therapy are also more prominent in women ages 50 and older.

Hormone therapy is often prescribed for postmenopausal women to help cope with the unpleasant symptoms of menopause such as mood swings, painful intercourse, hot flashes and night sweats, all caused by a drop in estrogen.

There have been varying results about the effects of prescribing hormone therapy for postmenopausal women. The Women’s Health Initiative Hormone Trials released a highly publicized study in 2004 that claimed that hormone therapy increased the risk of stroke and dementia. Recent research published in May 2024 refuted these claims.

“Our findings highlight the importance of emphasizing hormone therapy use in postmenopausal women to promote inclusive healthy aging,” Liu and Li wrote. “There is an association between menopause and the biological aging process, indicating the urgent need to address accelerated aging in postmenopausal women. Further investigations are warranted to confirm hormone therapy’s clinical benefits.”