Among women with UTIs, delirium is a common condition. Science Daily notes how it is especially widespread among those who have gone through menopause.
Recent research efforts discovered, through working with lab mice, that delirium symptoms can be prevented through estrogen.
Estrogen Can Help With Delirium
The findings of the study were included in Scientific Reports.
Shouri Lahiri, the director of the Neuroscience Care Research and Neurosciences Critical Care Unit, shares how interest and focus toward hormone replacement therapy has been resurging. Lahiri further shares that this recent study, founded on previous findings, reveals that this therapy can help deal with delirium.
Such findings could serve as a huge step in moving toward conducting estrogen trials among humans dealing with UTIs.
Estrogen Suppresses Interleukin, a Protein Significantly Linked to Delirium
In previous research, Lahiri's group discovered a significant link between delirium and a protein known as interleukin or IL-6. Conditions such as urinary infections or lung injuries push the IL-6 protein to route through blood and into the brain. This leads to confusion, disorientation, and other symptoms.
According to Science Daily, estrogen is established to be an inhibitor of the said protein. Hence, the researchers came up with tests to gauge how effective it is in handling delirium induced by UTI.
As part of the study procedures, Neuroscience News notes that the scientists compared mice that had UTIs that were both premenopausal and postmenopausal. The team examined behavior across various environmental settings.
In doing so, they noticed that among mice that went through induced menopause, there were manifest signs of delirium, such as confusion and anxiety. The others, however, did not exhibit such signs.
After issuing estrogen treatments to the mice, they observed that behavior concerning delirium and IL-6 protein levels significantly decreased. These differences in behavior were not linked to the severity of UTI since urine bacteria levels did not significantly vary across groups.
The team also examined the straightforward impact that neurons experienced due to estrogen.
Lahiri shared how the team made respective neurons exposed to an IL-6 mixture of inflammation to develop an injury similar to UTI. However, they observed that the injury was alleviated upon including estrogen in the mix.
According to their research, there were at least two methods that estrogen alleviated delirium symptoms. The hormone did so by decreasing levels of IL-6 within the bloodstream and directly protecting neurons.
Estrogen's exact way of shielding neurons remains to be a mystery. Moreover, before proceeding with clinical trials, scientists need to pinpoint which UTI patients are more likely to go through delirium and at what specific part estrogen will be optimally effective.
The research team also focuses on understanding delirium's impacts on men and women, respectively. Lahiri also notes how effective and impactful delirium treatment could be an important focus in the long run because it is an established risk factor for certain cognitive issues, including Alzheimer's and other dementia.
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