Monitor symptoms in midlife
Hadine Joffe, MD, MSc, a professor of psychiatry and executive director of the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, said the study findings were not surprising given how common the complaints of stress and depressive symptoms are.
Dr. Hadine Joffe
“Mood changes are linked with acute, immediate cortisol levels at the same point in time, and cognitive symptoms were linked to more chronically elevated cortisol levels,” Dr. Joffe said in an interview. “Women and their providers should monitor for these challenging brain symptoms in midlife as they affect performance and quality of life and are linked with changes in the HPA axis as stress biomarkers.”
Because the study is small and has a cross-sectional design, it’s not possible to determine the direction of the associations or to make any inferences about causation, Dr. Joffe said.
“We cannot make the conclusion that stress is adversely affecting mood and cognitive performance given the design limitations. It is possible that mood and cognitive issues contributed to these stress markers,” Dr. Joffe said.“However, it is known that the experience of stress is linked with vulnerability to mood and cognitive symptoms, and also that mood and cognitive symptoms induce significant stress.”
The research was funded by the Menopause Society, Colorado University, the Ludeman Family Center for Women’s Health Research, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Aging. Dr. Metcalf had no disclosures. Dr. Joffe has received grant support from Merck, Pfizer and Sage, and has been a consultant or advisor for Bayer, Merck and Hello Therapeutics.