Administration of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) increases serum levels of androgens and estrogens but does not enhance short-term memory in post-menopausal women

The current study examines the effect of administering dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) on short-term memory. This experiment used a double-blind placebo-controlled cross-over design to explore the effects of a four week regimen of 50 mg oral DHEA on performance on the digit span, verbal span, and modified Sternberg (Oberauer) tasks. The results demonstrate that the current regimen of drug administration significantly increases serum levels of DHEA, DHEAS, testosterone and estrone and substantially alters the patterns of correlations among the serum levels of these hormones. Despite this substantial change in the hormonal milieu, DHEA administration produced no beneficial effects on cognitive performance in the digit span, verbal span, or modified Sternberg paradigm tasks. Ancillary analyses of the relation between hormone levels and cognitive performance demonstrated a strong positive correlation between DHEA levels and performance on digit span forward/backward and verbal span forward in the placebo drug condition, but not in the DHEA condition. We interpret the juxtaposition of the null results of DHEA administration and the correlation of DHEA levels and performance in the placebo condition to indicate that the referenced correlations arise because a third variable (i.e., age) is associated with both performance and DHEA levels. Additional analyses supported this hypothesis.