Vasomotor symptoms linked to midlife brain health
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Women who experienced vasomotor symptoms had elevated whole brain volume of white matter hyperintensities, which can affect brain health, data presented at the NAMS Annual Meeting showed.
“Typically, we’ve regarded [vasomotor] symptoms as incidental midlife symptoms without implications for women’s health,” Rebecca C. Thurston, PhD, director of the women’s biobehavioral health program and a professor of psychiatry, epidemiology, psychology and clinical and translational science at the University of Pittsburgh, told Healio. “We know they are important for quality of life, for sleep, for mood, but generally we haven’t thought that they are important for physical health or brain health.”
However, recent studies have revealed that vasomotor symptoms do affect cardiovascular health.
In this study, Thurston and colleagues included 225 women aged 45 to 67 years for analyses to identify a link between brain health and vasomotor symptoms. Participants underwent ambulatory vasomotor symptom monitoring, actigraphy sleep assessment, phlebotomy to assess glucose, insulin and lipid levels, and neuroimaging. The researchers also measured participants’ height, weight and blood pressure.
Vasomotor symptoms were associated with greater whole-brain white matter hyperintensity volume, which indicates small vessel disease in the brain, Thurston said. Associations were observed between hyperintensities and vasomotor symptoms over 24 hours (P = .032) and those occurring during sleep (P = .004), but not with those occurring during waking hours (P = .092).
Spatially, vasomotor symptoms were associated with deep, periventricular and frontal lobe white matter hyperintensity volume.
“We don’t yet know whether treating vasomotor symptoms will improve women’s cardiovascular or cerebrovascular health,” Thurston said. “What we do know is that these symptoms are telling us something about women’s brain health and cardiovascular health.”
Thurston suggested that this knowledge could help clinicians decide which women should be targeted for early intervention against stroke, dementia and cognitive decline.
Future research should determine the mechanisms between vasomotor symptoms and brain health, as well as whether treating vasomotor symptoms is beneficial for brain health, Thurston said.