Groundbreaking research presented at the ECTRIMS 2025 conference held in Barcelona, Spain provides new insights into the ways in which menopause impacts the health implications and clinical manifestations in women who have multiple sclerosis. This study shows that changes in hormones influence the initial symptoms experienced by women with MS and also play a role in the comorbidities suffered by the affected individuals.
It has been known that MS disproportionately impacts women and the progression of the disease is influenced by the biological variables of the different sexes. However, the role that menopause plays in people with this disease hasn’t been studied before, until this research was conducted.
For their study, the Yasemin Simsek-led team obtained detailed data on 864 people diagnosed with MS. Of this number, 298 were women in pre-menopause, 300 women were in the post-menopause stage, while 265 subjects were men that had been age-matched to the female subjects. This study population was specifically selected in order to get a picture of how MS presented in the different sexes, and more specifically in women that had entered the menopause stage of their lives.
Simsek’s team paid special attention to the specific symptoms linked to neurodegenerative causes and those linked to neuroinflammatory factors.
An analysis of the data revealed that a notable 21% of the females in pre-menopause suffered from optic neuritis while just 11.7% of men had this condition and only 15% of the ladies in post-menopause had the condition. This shows that estrogen plus other sex hormones play an influential role in determining which parts of the central nervous system are impacted the most when the neuroinflammatory nature of MS strikes.
The researchers explain that since women in pre-menopause have more estrogen in their bodies, this hormone could result in more pronounced inflammatory responses in reaction to the disease, thereby impacting the optic nerve and setting off optic neuritis.
The researchers also noted that pre-menopause triggered a higher prevalence of psychiatric disorders like anxiety and depression. Comorbitities also differed between pre-menopause women on the one hand and men plus post-menopause women on the other hand. For instance, pre-menopausal women had a lower (15.1%) incidence of comorbidities when compared to men (36.6%) and post-menopausal women (41%).
The study highlights many other differences that strongly show that menopause has a big influence on how MS manifests and progresses. The researchers conclude that the management of this disease needs to be individualized and pay special attention to the life-stage changes that women go through so that the impacts of those changes are incorporated in the treatment plans selected.
For companies like Clene Inc. (NASDAQ: CLNN) focused on developing novel treatments for multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases, the study could help in coming up with formulations intended to address the specific needs of women in different stages of their lives rather than looking at solutions targeting everybody.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Clene Inc. (NASDAQ: CLNN) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/CLNN
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