Estrogen replacement therapy and frontotemporal dementia.

Abstract Objective: To examine the relationship between estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Methods: We examined the files of thirty female patients diagnosed with FTD at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)-Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Fresno between the years of 1994 and 1999. Twenty-one patients (70%) were found to have been taking ERT at the time of their evaluation. This was compared with an estimate of estrogen use in a similar cohort from the general population (24%). Results: Chi-square ( χ 2 ) analysis found this number to be significantly greater than estimates from the general population significant ( χ 2 [df=1, N =30]=34.803, P Conclusions: Three potential explanations for the findings are put forth, including an intriguing neurobiological relationship between estradiol and tau, the complex protein implicated in the etiology of FTD.