“Common forms of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can shrink the brains of post-menopausal women,” reports Channel 4 News.
The story comes from analysis of an earlier study in which women were given one of two forms of HRT or a dummy placebo pill. This trial was stopped early because women given HRT showed an increased risk of dementia. Three years later, researchers performed brain scans on some of the participants of this earlier study and found that two key areas of the brain were smaller in the women who were given HRT rather than the placebo pill.