About the Authors

N. Maritza Dowling

nmdowlin@biostat.wisc.edu

Affiliations Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America

Carey E. Gleason

Affiliations Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center, William S. Middleton Memorial Veteran’s Hospital, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America

JoAnn E. Manson

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Howard N. Hodis

Affiliation Atherosclerosis Research Unit, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Virginia M. Miller

Affiliation Departments of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering and Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America

Eliot A. Brinton

Affiliation Department of Cardiovascular Genetics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America

Genevieve Neal-Perry

Affiliation Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Women’s Health and Dominick Purpura Department of Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, United States of America

M. Nanette Santoro

Affiliation Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado, United States of America

Marcelle Cedars

Affiliation Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Rogerio Lobo

Affiliation Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, New York, United States of America

George R. Merriam

Affiliation VA Puget Sound Health Care System and Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology, and Nutrition, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Whitney Wharton

Affiliations Department of Medicine, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center, William S. Middleton Memorial Veteran’s Hospital, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America

Frederick Naftolin

Affiliation Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America

Hugh Taylor

Affiliation Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

S. Mitchell Harman

Affiliation Kronos Longevity Research Institute and Phoenix VA Medical Center, Phoenix, Arizona, United States of America

Sanjay Asthana

Affiliations Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center, William S. Middleton Memorial Veteran’s Hospital, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America

Competing Interests

Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Inc. supplied the CLIMARA® estradiol and placebo patches and Abbott Laboratories (formerly Solvay Pharmaceuticals) provided the micronized progesterone (PROMETRIUM®) and placebo capsules. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: NMD VMM JEM HNH EAB GNP MNS MC RL GRM FN HT SMH SA. Performed the experiments: NMD VMM JEM HNH EAB GNP MNS MC RL GRM FN HT SMH. Analyzed the data: NMD. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: NMD. Wrote the paper: NMD. Revised the article for intellectual content: CEG VMM JEM HNH EAB GNP MNS MC RL GRM FN HT SMH SA. Acquisition of cognitive data: CEG WW.