Oestrogen relieves schizophrenia - study

March 16, 2008

Sex hormone relieves schizophrenia - study

4:20PM Sunday March 16, 2008

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2 & objectid=10498489

SYDNEY - Hormone patches used to help older women through menopause can also radically improve the most debilitating symptoms of schizophrenia, a trial on Australian women has found.

A study to be presented at a major international women's mental health conference tomorrow in Melbourne has shown for the first time that the female sex hormone, oestrogen, dramatically reduces hallucinations, delusions and thought disorder in women with the severe mental illness.

"This is revolutionary because it shows without a doubt that it really works to help these women," said study leader Professor Jayashri Kulkarni, director of the Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre in Melbourne.

"It's the strongest sign yet that we have a new mode of treatment for schizophrenia using reproductive hormones."

Oestrogen, a potent neurosteroid, is a key component in hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a controversial treatment found to relieve the hot flushes and mood swings suffered in menopause.

Recent studies have suggested the hormone also has a protective effect against schizophrenia, which could explain why women tend to get the disease later in life and less severely than men. But the link has not been explained or demonstrated in patients.

Prof Kulkarni has been investigating the connection for 15 years and in research soon to be published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, has shown it can work.

Her research team enlisted 102 female patients in Melbourne and treated them with either a moderate dose of oestrogen using a skin patch, the same as those used in HRT, or a dummy patch.

"The women who received the hormone patch got remarkably better over the eight-week trial, by making radical improvements in key symptoms," Prof Kulkarni said.

"It effectively worked on them like an anti-psychotic drug in the brain, targeting the dopamine and serotonin receptor systems which are out of line, and regenerating neural tissue.

"The women were not exposed to the increased breast cancer risk associated with HRT, because the treatment was short-term," she said.

The results were strong enough to recommend the treatment widely among women with schizophrenia, the team said.

They are now investigating its use in women with severe depression just prior to menopause, as well as studying a new range of brain oestrogens called selective oestrogen receptor modulators that work specifically on the brain.

"That limits the carcinogenic effect on the body, making it a much better treatment modality," said Prof Kulkarni, who is the convenor of the International Congress on Women's Mental Health.

The event brings together global and national leaders in psychiatry, psychology, obstetrics, gynaecology, family health care, social work, nursing and community health to discuss female mental health issues from ADHD and eating disorders to postnatal depression and dementia.

- AAP