Research

Hormonal

In recently postmenopausal women, 4 years of oral conjugated equine estrogens (o-CEE) combined with micronized progesterone improves depression and anxiety symptoms, whereas transdermal estradiol (t-E2) provides no mood benefit compared to placebo.

If you are a recently postmenopausal woman considering hormone therapy for mood symptoms, oral conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) combined with progesterone may help reduce depression and anxiety over 4 years. Transdermal estradiol patches did not show these mood benefits compared to placebo. Hormone therapy did not improve cognition in this study.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
For mood, model estimates indicated that women treated with o-CEE showed improvements in depression and anxiety symptoms over the 48 mo of treatment, compared to women on placebo... Mood outcomes for women randomized to t-E2 were similar to those for women on placebo.
Carey E. Gleason et al. · PLoS Medicine · 2015

Why this rating

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (RCT) with a large sample size (n=693) and long duration (4 years).

Source

Effects of Hormone Therapy on Cognition and Mood in Recently Postmenopausal Women: Findings from the Randomized, Controlled KEEPS–Cognitive and Affective Study

Carey E. Gleason et al. · PLoS Medicine · 2015

DOI 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001833

rct · n=693Cited 480×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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