Menopause isn’t quite what it used to be. New treatments exist. Research is accelerating. There’s even a pill for it. You might know Veozah. It’s FDA approved. Non-hormonal. Prescribed for those miserable hot flashes and drenching night sweats. It does the advertised job. But apparently? It does more.
A lot more.
Data is emerging. Veozah didn’t just cool down the flashes. It lifted the weight. Anxiety dropped. Depression lightened up.
The study is called OPTION-VMS. The findings are statistical but the impact is human. Experts have some thoughts on what this actually means.
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Who’s Speaking?
Here are the voices behind the analysis. Mary Jane Minkin. She’s at Yale. Founded Madame Ovary. Lauren Streicher. She teaches at Northwestern. Also a host. And Jessica Shepherd. An author in her field. They know their stuff.
What Did They Find?
The study is still running. But they dropped some preliminary numbers at the Endocrine Society meeting recently. Observational style. Six hundred and fifty-six women. Ages 40 to 75. All sweating it out. All taking something.
Some got Veozah (fezolinetant). Some took SSRIs or SNRs. Some grabbed gabapentin. Oxybutynin was on the list too. The usual suspects for hot flash relief.
They watched them for 12 weeks. Check-ins at weeks four and eight. Tracked the flashes. Also tracked the mood. The anxiety. The depression.
Women on Veozah saw fewer hot flashes. That was expected. The surprise? The mental health metrics. Anxiety and depression improved. Statistically significantly. And fast. As early as week four. It kept going through week 12.
Did other drugs do this too?
Sure. The SSRIs helped anxiety. That’s kind of their whole deal. But seeing a hot-flash drug pull double duty is different.
Why Would This Happen?
Two theories mostly. One is sleep. Mary Jane Minkin points it out directly. Veozah stops the sweating. Women sleep. Better sleep leads to a better vibe. Simple cause and effect.
Then there’s the mechanism. Jessica Shepherd brings up the NK3 receptors. Veozah blocks them in the brain. It calms the thermostat. But since heat spikes tie into stress, lowering the temp might lower the panic too.
Lauren Streicher is more cautious. She asks the million dollar question. Is it the drug itself? Or is it just that the hot flashes stopped? She notes a flaw. They didn’t track women with anxiety without hot flashes. So it’s hard to know what Veozah is actually fixing on its own.
What Comes Next?
It’s blurry right now.
For the new menopausal? If anxiety hits alongside the heat for the first time? This could be useful. But Streicher warns against overpromising. Veozah won’t likely fix a mood problem in someone who isn’t overheating. Don’t make that assumption.
Shepherd sees a bigger picture though. “A more comprehensive approach,” she calls it. Stop treating sleep and mood as separate silos. They’re wired together. Future therapies might target that shared brain pathway.
One thing remains clear. Don’t toss your antidepressants. Shepherd is firm. Veozah is an addition. Not a replacement for talk therapy or standard meds. Keep the foundation. Add this brick. See what sticks.
Will this change how we prescribe? Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see.
