Editorial: Impact of female hormones on the brain

Impact of female hormones on the brainThe specificities of women, including women's brains, have been neglected in research over many years.Discussions about the inclusion of women in research only became topical in the 1970s, as part of the women's health movement.However, in 1977, a Food and Drug Administration policy recommended excluding women of childbearing potential from Phase I and early Phase II drug trials (1).This policy was a reaction to adverse drug-related incidents in pregnant women who had participated in clinical trials; however, the implications of this led to a shortage of data on how many drugs affect women, as well as broader gap in knowledge about neuroscience related to sex and gender.In response to this knowledge gap, NIH developed a policy on the inclusion of women in clinical research, which became law in 1993.Since that time, the importance of reporting of research results with specification of both biological sex and gender has been recognised (2).The more specific impacts of female hormones on the brain has only attracted interest in recent decades and investigations on this topic are leading to dramatic advances in clinical understanding and applications.Hantsoo et al. elegantly reviewed female-specific mood disorders such as premenstrual dysphoric disorder, postpartum depression and perimenopausal depression. They stressed the tremendous interplay, especially in women with a history of trauma, between the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and female hormones in the occurrence of depression across the female reproductive lifecycle. Interestingly, Hantsoo et al. suggest that studies comparing HPA axis function between females with premenstrual dysphoric disorder with and without a history of trauma are needed.This is the objective of the investigation by Nayman et al..This research team demonstrated that women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder and a history of childhood trauma exhibited lower cortisol levels during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle compared to the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle whereas no such cyclicity was observed with women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder without such a history.These results illustrate substantial heterogeneity in the physiopathology of premenstrual dysphoric disorder.In their research on the role of endogenous and exogenous sex hormones (i.e.oral contraceptives) on morphologic alterations of the fear circuitry Brouillard et al. found that both endogenous and exogenous sex hormones can affect brain morphology.They demonstrated sex differences in grey matter volume in brain regions associated with fear Frontiers in Endocrinology frontiersin.

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