A new study has revealed that women going through the menopause do suffer from temporary loss of memory and learning ability.
For a four-year period, researchers studied 2,362 women, who were between the ages of 42 and 52 had at least one menstrual period in the three months before the study started.
This is the largest study of its kind to date and has been published in the May 26, 2009 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The women were given three tests:
* verbal memory
* working memory
* a test that measured the speed at which they processed information.
Scientists tested the women throughout four stages of the menopause transition:
- premenopausal (no change in menstrual periods)
- early perimenopausal (menstrual irregularity but no "gaps" of 3 months)
- late perimenopausal (having no period for three to 11 months)
- postmenopausal (no period for 12 months).
The study found that processing speed improved with repeated testing during premenopause, early perimenopause and postmenopause, but that scores during late perimenopause did not show the same degree of improvement.
