I am very grateful to my funders the @vivensa.bsky.social and @bartscharity.bsky.social for funding this research through seed awards. More research is desperately needed to understand the impact of menopause on immunity and I hope more funders consider this as an important research area. #immunosky

This study was an amazing Early Career researcher effort with Roel de Maeyer performing the functional monocyte assays, @oliviabracken.bsky.social performing the bioinformatic analysis, and my lovely lab member Justyna performing the Menopause analysis. I am very grateful for all their hard work.

Importantly the use of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in menopausal females kept their monocytes looking ‘young’ and they had improved phagocytosis as compared to age matched controls. Highlighting the potential immune benefits of HRT.

In this paper we demonstrate that there is an increase in inflammatory monocytes with altered proteome in post-menopausal females, which is not observed with age in males. Phagocytosis is significantly decreased in post-menopausal as compared to pre-menopausal females.

Thanks :). Good question, my collaborators at UCL including @bcellsrosser.bsky.social have been working with samples from transgender individuals who are undergoing gender reaffirming hormone therapy. I am not sure what data they have on monocytes, but it probably won't be functional.

Thank you to @bartscharity.bsky.social who funded my menopause and HRT research. I am super excited for the next dataset on menopause and HRT so keep your eyes peeled 🤓

Finally in middle-aged cis-female donors. Those who were taking Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) had similar class switch B cell numbers to younger females. rupress.org/view-large/f...

My favourite bits about the paper come from studying old and young donors. We found that post-menopausal women had similar class switched B cells to men. rupress.org/view-large/f...