News Alert Estrogen Therapy Does Not Reduce Dementia Risk (PDF document)
The Women's Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS) is an ancillary study to the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). WHIMS was designed to determine the effects of Hormone Therapy (HT) on the development and progression of dementia symptoms in postmenopausal women. It is hypothesized that the development of symptoms associated with dementia will be delayed in women who are on active HT, as opposed to placebo, and that HT will delay the progression of symptoms associated with dementia in women with Alzheimer's and all-cause dementia. The development of dementia-related symptoms will be examined with respect to hysterectomy status, type of treatment, age, ethnicity and clinic site.
Thirty-nine of the 40 WHI Clinical Centers participate in the WHIMS trial. Recruitment of study participants began in June, 1996 and ended in December, 1998. A total of 7,480 women ages 65-79 were recruited from the HT Trial of WHI. Of the 7,480 women, 2,948 are in the estrogen only (E-alone) study for women without a uterus at the time they enrolled and 4,532 are in the estrogen plus progestin (E+P) study for women with a uterus at time of enrollment. Study coordination for WHIMS is provided by the central administrative and data site (WHIMS CCC; Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC). All participants will be followed annually with cognitive testing until 2005 and results from WHIMS will be available in 2007.
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