Observational studyNeurology2025
Association of Menopause With Functional Outcomes and Disease Biomarkers in Women With Multiple Sclerosis.
Observational study in Neurology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Menopause and neurological disorders: a roadmap for research.Nature reviews. Neurology · 2026Review
- The Neurology of Menopause.Current neurology and neuroscience reports · 2026Review
- Menopause is a physiological progression event for women with multiple sclerosis: No.Multiple sclerosis (Houndmills, Basingstoke, England) · 2026Article
- Menopause is a physiological progression event for women with multiple sclerosis: Yes.Multiple sclerosis (Houndmills, Basingstoke, England) · 2026Article
- Multiple Sclerosis in Women: Impact of Different Life Stages on Treatment Decisions.CNS drugs · 2026Review
- Menopause and multiple sclerosis: A scoping review of symptoms, disease course, and lived experience.Maturitas · 2026Article
- Neurologic Complications of Pregnancy and Menopause.Continuum (Minneapolis, Minn.) · 2026Review
- Sex differences in the development, treatment, and prognosis of multiple sclerosis in Switzerland.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Modulation of the immunological and neuroinflammatory microenvironment in older people with multiple sclerosis.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Menopause Impact on Multiple Sclerosis Disability Progression.JAMA neurology · 2025Article
- Sex-Related Differences in Lifestyle Factors Affecting Multiple Sclerosis Susceptibility and Disease Progression.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Impact of sex on multiple sclerosis therapy.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2025Review
- Immunometabolic profiling in menopausal women with multiple sclerosis: the role of adipokines and hormone therapy.BMJ neurology open · 2025Article
- Sex differences in relapse-independent and relapse-associated disability progression in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: a real-world inverse-probability weighted study.Therapeutic advances in neurological disorders · 2025Article
- Does menopause affect MS progression? Evidence and ongoing debates.Neurodegenerative disease managementArticle
- Menopause and ageing in women with multiple sclerosis.Frontiers in neurologyReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
objectiveThe impact of menopause on the brain is not well understood. Hormonal changes, including puberty and pregnancy, influence the onset and course of multiple sclerosis (MS). After menopause, a worsening of MS disease trajectory measured on the clinician-rated Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) was reported in some, but not all, studies. Evaluating the association between menopause and more objective measures of CNS injury is warranted. This study sought to assess the trajectory of objective functional outcomes and disease biomarkers in women with MS before and after menopause in a longitudinal prospective observational cohort.
methodsData were collected prospectively from a longitudinally followed MS cohort, including the performance-based Multiple Sclerosis Functional Composite (MSFC) as the primary functional outcome and the paraclinical marker of neuronal injury serum neurofilament light chain (sNfL) as the primary biomarker outcome. Outcomes were analyzed using segmented linear mixed model regressions adjusted for age, BMI, and tobacco use, with a change in slope at the time of menopause, as the a priori inflection point.
resultsOne hundred and eighty-four postmenopausal women met inclusion criteria. Participants were followed for a median of 13 years (interquartile range [IQR] = 4, range: 1-17). The median MS duration was 24 years (IQR = 13, range: 3-64), and the median EDSS score was 2.5 (IQR = 2, range: 0-8). The median age at natural menopause was 50 years (IQR = 5, range: 33-60); 17% of participants used any systemic menopausal hormone therapy. Menopause reflected an inflection point in MSFC worsening (slope difference 0.08, 95% CI 0.01, 0.14, DISCUSSION: The menopausal transition may represent an inflection in accumulation of neuronal injury and functional decline in MS.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.