Reacción a "Reactions: study associates hormone therapy for menopause with possible development of dementia "

This is a large observational study and the data from a health registry should be of a good quality. It is important to note that the data was not collected specifically for this study. 

 I don’t believe you can suggest a causal link from this data, it is known that many women who seek HRT at or around menopause do so because of concerns around memory and cognition, potentially confounding data. 

 There is research that suggests HRT can be protective with respect to dementia, also other research that the paper cites, that HRT is associated with dementia – this suggests to me that we really don’t know the whole story and targeted research is required. 

We cannot tell from this study whether or not different routes of administration have the same apparent effect – this too needs to be investigated. [...] 

This research may cause alarm for women taking HRT, but it highlights just how much we still don’t know about the effects of hormones on women’s brain health and with promising treatments on the horizon it should be a call to action to make this a priority area of research.