A study by French, Australian and British researchers revealed that women who’ve had menopause before hitting 40 could experience more problems with visual memory and verbal fluency as they age.

In the peer-reviewed journal BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the researchers studied 4,868 women aged 65 for several years to look for links between early menopause and mental health. Early menopause (also known as premature menopause) can be natural or unnatural and was defined as one year without menstruating for women aged 40 and below.

They found out that all their participants who experienced early menopause had a 56% increased risk of poor verbal fluency and 39% increased risk of poor visual memory. This meant that early menopause and memory problems were linked.

What was surprising about the finding was that hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a hormone supplement treatment usually administered to women who lose certain hormones because of menopause, had the tendency to worsen verbal fluency as it improved visual memory among aging women.

But a piece of good news that the researchers pointed out was that early menopause did not exactly lead to severe mental decline such as dementia.

Premature menopause can be caused by conditions such as damaged ovaries and ovarian failure.