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Hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women with schizophrenia: positive effect on negative symptoms?
L A Lindamer1, D C Buse, J B Lohr
1Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA.
Background:
Some studies of premenopausal women suggest that the severity of psychopathology associated with schizophrenia may be related to levels of estrogen.
Methods:
We examined psychopathology in community-dwelling postmenopausal women with schizophrenia who had received (n = 24) versus had never received (n = 28) hormone replacement therapy.
Results:
Users of hormone replacement therapy and nonusers did not differ significantly with respect to age, ethnicity, education, age of onset, duration of schizophrenia, global cognitive functioning, or neuroleptic-induced movement disorders. The hormone replacement therapy users received lower average daily doses of antipsychotic medication; they had similar levels of positive symptoms but significantly less severe negative symptoms compared with hormone replacement therapy nonusers, independent of differences in antipsychotic dosage.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that the use of hormone replacement therapy in conjunction with antipsychotic medication in postmenopausal women with schizophrenia may help reduce negative, but not positive, symptoms.