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The new science of menopause: these emerging therapies could change women’s health

Researchers are exploring how to prolong ovarian life and revisiting hormone replacement therapy — a once routine treatment that has fallen out of favour.
By
  1. Lynne Peeples

    1. Lynne Peeples is a science journalist in Seattle, Washington.

Stylised illustration showing a small figure of a woman holding back a clock from rolling down a fallopian tube.

Illustration: Maria Corte

In late 2022, Naomi Busch, a lone physician in her book group, began fielding question after question about menopause. Members of the group had started to experience the hallmark symptoms — hot flushes, poor sleep and mood swings — and wondered what they could do about them. “They all looked at me,” says Busch, “and I was like, ‘I don’t know anything about menopause.’” She searched for knowledgeable physicians in and around Seattle, where she lives, but the few specialists were booked out for several months. Meanwhile, the women in the book group were not getting the answers that they needed from their gynaecologists or primary-care physicians. “I’m not going down quietly,” Busch remembers one woman vowing.

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Nature 637, 782-784 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00069-4

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 05 February 2025: An earlier version of this News feature misdescribed the role of ARPA-H in the Biden administration’s White House Initiative on women’s health research.

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