Significant improvement seen in self-reported brain fog, concentration, working memory, processing speed, verbal memory, problem solving
TUESDAY, Sept. 1, 2026 (HealthDay News) — An estrogen hormone treatment combining estriol and progesterone may relieve symptoms of “brain fog” in menopausal women, according to a study published online Sept. 1 in Scientific Reports.
Noriko Itoh, from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles, and colleagues examined treatment with Pearlpak, which contains estriol and progesterone, for its effect on cognitive domain-specific symptoms in a case series involving 20 menopausal women. A preclinical model was used to explore the mechanisms involved.
The researchers identified significant improvements in self-reported brain fog, concentration, working memory, processing speed, verbal memory, and problem solving in the women at treatment month 12. Previously ovariectomized midlife female mice (age 12 to 13 months) exhibited cognitive deficits on he Morris Water Maze; glial activation and synaptic loss were seen on dorsal hippocampal pathology. Increased levels of Enolase 1 (ENO1), a key protein in glucose utilization, were seen in astrocytes. There was a correlation observed for increased ENO1 with worse cognitive performance. The deleterious effects of ovariectomy were recapitulated by deletion of estrogen receptor beta in astrocytes in gonadally intact midlife females. In contrast, ENO1 expression was reduced in hippocampal astrocytes, glial activation and synaptic loss were reduced, and cognitive performance was improved with treatment of midlife female mice with estriol from age 11 to 12 months.
“Women are often told to simply live with brain fog, when in fact there is a neuroscience basis for it, and potentially a way to address it,” senior author Rhonda Voskuhl, M.D., also from UCLA, said in a statement. “That gap in care is what motivated us to look more closely at estriol.”
One author is an inventor on UCLA”s patents pertaining to hormone treatment for cognition and is an advisor for Cleopatrarx, the company that licensed the UCLA patents.
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