Testosterone spray could protect memory in women

According to a small open-label pilot study reported at ENDO 2011: The Endocrine Society 93rd Annual Meeting, testosterone could protect the memory of healthy aging women.
“The results of our study offer a potential therapy, where none currently exists, to slow cognitive decline in women,” said lead investigator Sonia Louise Davison, MD, PhD, from the Women’s Health Research Program at Monash University inMelbourne, Australia.
From Medscape.com:

Dr. Davison’s team explored the effects of testosterone on cognitive performance in 9 nondepressed cognitively normal women. The women were between 47 and 60 years of age (mean age, 55 years) and were receiving stable-dose hormone replacement therapy that was not administered orally. They applied the testosterone spray to the abdomen once daily for 26 weeks. A control group of 30 women provided normative data for comparison.
At baseline and 26 weeks, all of study subjects took a computerized cognitive test battery, called CogState, which is capable of detecting small changes in cognitive performance, Dr. Davison explained.
There were no differences between the 2 groups in any parameter at baseline.
After 26 weeks, “significant improvements” from baseline were observed in learning (verbal and visual) and memory in the testosterone group (P < .05 for both). In contrast, there were no significant differences between baseline and 26 weeks in the control group.
“Testosterone should be further studied in randomized placebo-controlled trials to determine whether it improves cognitive performance in postmenopausal women,” she added.