Climacteric and cognition: the scores of a sample of climacteric women in mini-mental state examination and word-list memory test

THESES

Climacteric and cognition: the scores of a sample of climacteric women in mini-mental state examination and word-list memory test (abstract)^*. Dissertation. Rio de Janeiro, 2007.

Rita de Cássia Leite Fernandes ^**

INTRODUCTION: In Brazil, research on cognition and climacteric is scanty, despite the great prevalence of memory complaints in this phase of the female life. The objective of this research was to describe the scores of climacteric women in neuropsychological tests and to verify possible associations with sociodemographic, clinical, gynecological and depressive characteristics.

METHOD: 156 women, ranging from 40 to 65 years old, were evaluated with two neurocognitive tests and a depressive scale: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Word-List Memory Test (WLMT) and CESD (Center for Epidemiological Studies Depressive Scale).

RESULTS: The average scores obtained in MMSE (M=25.86; SD=2.67) were different to the ones found in other stratum within the Brazilian population only to illiterate climacteric women, who scored higher (M=21.72; SD=3.77). There was a trend for underscoring only the questions for attention and copy in the MMSE items. The average score in WLMT was similar to the ones obtained by other authors (M=18.83; SD=3.82). There were no significant relationships between the average scores on the tests and climacteric period, demographic characteristics, intensity of depressive symptoms and clinical or gynecological conditions, except for lower scores obtained by hypertensive women in WLMT. The Z score of nine women (5.7%) were found to be below 1.5 SD in WLMT.

CONCLUSIONS: We concluded that these average scores, in a specific population cut point, did not exhibit differences chargeable to their peculiar characteristics. The lowering of attention may justify some of the frequent memory complaints of climacteric women. The low scores obtained by some women in the WLMT requires further investigations.

Key words: climateric, menopause, cognition, depression, neuropsychological tests.

*

Climatério e cognição: desempenho de um grupo de mulheres climatéricas no mini-exame do estado mental e no teste de memória da lista de palavras (Resi,p). Dissetação de Mestrado, Instituto Fernandes Figueira / Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ) - Rio de Janeiro (Área: Saúde Coletiva). Orientadoras: Lizanka Paola de Figueirrfp; Silvia Eliane Vasconcelos Zahar.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  05 June 2009
• Date of issue
  June 2009