New Research Shows Oestrogen Makes Females More Resilient to Stress
It has long been believed that women are generally more resilient to stress than men. But it was not until recently that scientists looked into the biological basis behind this popular view. Published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, a new study suggests it may have something to do with a female’s oestrogen levels.
In a study on rats, University at Buffalo researchers found that the female hormone oestrogen has a protective effect against stress. For their study, a group of female rats showed no impairment in their ability to recall and recognise objects after being exposed to periodic physical restraint stress for one week. Meanwhile, male rats exposed to the same amount of stress showed impairment in their short-term memory. The stressor used in the study was the same with common human experiences that even though not dangerous, can be emotionally challenging, like feelings of being ‘under pressure’.
According to the researchers, a disruption in the ability to remember familiar objects indicates a disturbance in the signalling ability of the glutamate receptor in the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain that controls several cognitive processes such as attention, emotional processing, working memory and other high-level ‘executive’ processes. This confirms the previous study conducted the researchers last year, showing that stress results to the loss of glutamate receptors in the prefrontal cortex of young males.
Their current findings show that the glutamate receptors are intact in the brain of the female subjects. By manipulating the oestrogen levels in the brain, the researchers were able to make the male rats as resilient to stress as their female counterparts. Furthermore, female rats whose ovaries were removed showed increased vulnerability to stress.
Their findings suggest that the enzyme aromatase, which produces estradiol (a type of oestrogen hormone) in the brain, is responsible for females’ natural resilience to stress.
"If we could find compounds similar to oestrogen that could be administered without causing hormonal side effects, they could prove to be a very effective treatment for stress-related problems in males” said senior author Zhen Yan, PhD. She is a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Dr Yan added that even though stress is not a psychiatric disorder itself, it can trigger the onset of mental illnesses in vulnerable individuals.
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