Hochheim Mette C, Frokjaer Vibe G, Larsen Søren V, Dam Vibeke H
Neurobiology Research Unit, Copenhagen University Hospital Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medicinal Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Arch Womens Ment Health. 2025 May 19. doi: 10.1007/s00737-025-01592-z.
Female sex hormones as well as the synthetic hormones contained within combined oral contraceptives (COCs) may influence emotional and cognitive functioning including learning and memory; however, findings are inconsistent. We here present the largest study to date investigating the effect of COC use on verbal memory in healthy women.
COC use and verbal memory scores were available from the CIMBI database for 205 healthy women in the reproductive age. We assessed if verbal memory and affective bias differed between COC users and non-users. In a subgroup of natural cycling women in the follicular phase, we assessed if verbal memory was associated with plasma estradiol levels.
We found no statistically significant group differences in either overall memory performance (p = 0.16) or affective memory bias (p = 0.18) between COC users and non-users, although there was a trend suggesting COC users may exhibit slightly better recall for short-term (p = 0.09) and long-term task (p = 0.08) conditions. Similarly, COC users tended to have slightly better overall memory compared with women in the follicular phase (p = 0.05). Follicular phase plasma estradiol levels were not associated with verbal memory.
We found no support for COC use to negatively impact verbal memory, if anything COC users tended to perform better than natural cycling women in follicular phase; however, this could be influenced by a healthy user bias. In conclusion, these findings highlight that women who tolerate COCs well should not be concerned about potential adverse effects on memory.
女性性激素以及复方口服避孕药(COC)中的合成激素可能会影响包括学习和记忆在内的情绪和认知功能;然而,研究结果并不一致。我们在此展示了迄今为止规模最大的一项研究,该研究调查了使用COC对健康女性言语记忆的影响。
从CIMBI数据库中获取了205名处于生育年龄的健康女性的COC使用情况和言语记忆分数。我们评估了COC使用者和非使用者之间的言语记忆和情感偏差是否存在差异。在卵泡期自然月经周期的女性亚组中,我们评估了言语记忆是否与血浆雌二醇水平相关。
我们发现,COC使用者和非使用者在总体记忆表现(p = 0.16)或情感记忆偏差(p = 0.18)方面均无统计学上的显著组间差异,尽管有趋势表明COC使用者在短期(p = 0.09)和长期任务(p = 0.08)条件下的回忆可能略好。同样,与卵泡期的女性相比,COC使用者的总体记忆往往略好(p = 0.05)。卵泡期血浆雌二醇水平与言语记忆无关。
我们没有发现支持使用COC会对言语记忆产生负面影响的证据,相反,COC使用者在卵泡期的表现往往比自然月经周期的女性更好;然而,这可能受到健康使用者偏差的影响。总之,这些发现表明,能够很好耐受COC的女性不应担心其对记忆的潜在不良影响。