NIH study suggests late perimenopause stage may cause learning problems

As if some older women don't have enough health issues to worry about, a new study from the National Institutes of Health suggests that those just approaching menopause might have more trouble learning than women in other phases of life. The researchers studied more than 2300 women between the ages of 42 and 52 for four years and tested them for verbal memory, working memory and their speed for processing information. Study results indicated that processing speed improved with repeated testing during premenopause, early perimenopause and postmenopause. However, scores for women who were in the late perimenopause stage did not show the same degree of improvement. Improvements in processing speed during late perimenopause were only 28 percent as large as improvements observed in premenopause. The study appears in the May 26 print edition of the journal Neurology.