CHICAGO, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- Estrogen hormone therapies may help protect women against brain aneurysms, U.S. researchers suggest.
Neurointerventionalists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago say post-menopausal women suffer 70 percent of brain aneurysms -- abnormal ballooning of a brain artery that can rupture and cause hemorrhaging.
The researchers find the mean age of women with aneurysm was 52 -- a time of life coinciding with a severe drop in estrogen levels. Moreover, they find the rate of oral contraceptive usage in women suffering aneurysm was 60 percent, compared to 77.6 percent in the control group.
The rate of hormone replacement therapy usage was 23.7 percent in the aneurysm group and 44.8 percent in the control group.
"By understanding the potential link between low levels of estrogen and aneurysms, we can focus our areas of study with the hope of providing women who are at risk for brain aneurysms with preventative therapies," lead author Dr. Michael Chen says in a statement.
Chen and colleagues conducted a retrospective, case-control study comparing gynecological histories of a group of 60 women treated for unruptured and ruptured aneurysms versus a control group of 4,682 random females.
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Neurointerventional Surgery.
