Women with Alzheimer’s disease saw no cognitive benefit taking raloxifene

Raloxifene, a selective estrogen receptor modulator, did not improve cognition for older women with Alzheimer’s disease, according to new findings to be published in “Neurology.”

The pilot study followed 42 women with late-onset mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. They were randomly assigned to take a high dose (120 mg/d) oral raloxifene or placebo daily for 12 months. After, researchers found no significant difference in the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale, cognitive subscale (ADAS-cog).

“The take-home message from this relatively small, one-year study is that raloxifene does not have a large, or even a medium, effect on cognition in women with Alzheimer disease,” says Victor W. Henderson, MD, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Stanford University to Medscape Medical News. “However, we were not able to exclude the possibility of a small cognitive effect.”

Raloxifene has been reported to benefit verbal memory in older postmenopausal women without dementia. Researchers suggest “future studies might examine raloxifene effects within this cognitive domain more closely.” They caution their findings cannot be drawn for the general population as the sample was small and not reflective of the racial and ethnic diversity.

Read the full study here.

Nicole Stempak

Nicole was Senior Editor at I Advance Senior Care and Long Term Living Magazine 2015-2017. She has a Journalism degree from Kent State University and is finalizing a master’s degree in Information Architecture and Management. She has extensive studies in the digital user experience and in branding online media. She has worked as an editor and writer for various B2B publications, including Business Finance.