Menopause Impact Negligible in MS

Published: April 27, 2012

Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner

NEW ORLEANS — The clinical course of multiple sclerosis does not appear to be affected by advent of menopause, researchers said here.

The two year change in the Expanded Disability Status Scale increased 0.139 points in a two-year period among pre-menopausal women and 0.122 points in menopausal women (P=0.83), according to Riley Bove, MD, a research fellow at the Multiple Sclerosis Center at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

In reviewing data from the Partners Multiple Sclerosis Center in Boston, Bove and colleagues also found that changes in MRI scans were also similar for both groups of women — the brain parenchymal fraction declined 0.001 in both groups (P=0.70), and T2 lesion volume decreased 0.002 in pre-menopausal women and increased 0.025 in menopausal women, (P=0.34). Neither change achieved statistical significance.

On the other hand, on the Short Form-36 self-assessment of physical functioning, menopausal women scored lower (P<0.001) than premenopausal women, Bove and colleagues noted in their poster presentation at the American Academy of Neurology meeting.

“There is a scientific rationale for menopause and worsening multiple sclerosis symptoms because menopause modulates other neurologic diseases including dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus and other inflammatory diseases,” Bove told MedPage Today. “So there would be an expectation that it might be similar in multiple sclerosis.”

But when the research team looked at hard clinical outcomes such as MRI brain scans, the evidence was not there.

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