Female reproductive health and cognitive function

Abstract Objective: The impact of sex hormones milieu on women's cognitive performance at different reproductive stages has caused increased caution. Our research aims to explore whether parity is negatively correlated with cognitive function. Methods: There were 1,093 postmenopausal participants recruited from the Health and Nutrition Examination Survey dataset. Cognitive functioning was evaluated by digit symbol substitution test (DSST). We performed log transformation to normalize the distributions of the DSST values. Results: Participants were categorized into tertile groups based on the number of pregnancies. Using the zero to one pregnancy group as the reference, there was a reduced DSST scores with β values of −0.13 (95% confidence interval [CI] −0.23 to −0.03; P = 0.008) in the ≥5 pregnancies group after adjusting for socioeconomic, medical disease, lifestyle, and reproductive components. Moreover, women who had their last pregnancy after 28 years old and education less than 12 years also was correlate with cognitive malfunction after adjusting relevant covariates (both P < 0.001). Conclusions: Women with at least five pregnancies had poorer cognitive performance. Last pregnancy after 28 years old and education less than 12 years also was associated with poorer DSST scores. Video Summary: http://links.lww.com/MENO/A634.