While early menopausal women faced increased cardiovascular and premature death risks, women aged 50 to 54 at the onset had a lower risk of fatal cardiovascular disease than women younger than 50.
Advertisement
One in 10 women enter so-called natural menopause by age 45, Muka and colleagues write in JAMA Cardiology.
According to the researchers, women who reach the menopause early in life have increased odds to develop cardiovascular disease and are more likely to die younger than their counterparts who enter menopause later in life.
The team compared women who experienced menopause before reaching 45 years old and women who were 45 years or older at onset of menopause. The researchers published their findings September 14th in the journal JAMA Cardiology.
For their study, the researchers analyzed data from 32 different studies, dating back to the 1990s and involving 310,329 women.
The menopause, which occurs on average at the age of 51, happens when the body stops naturally producing oestrogen and other sex hormones.
When they crunched their numbers, the researchers discovered that women who had early menopause, before the age of 45, were about 50 percent more likely than their peers to have coronary heart disease, 20 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease such as heart attack and stroke, and 12 percent more likely to die in general from any cause.
The findings suggest that age at menopause may help predict women’s risk for future health problems, said lead author Dr. Taulant Muka, of Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Professional societies agree that women with early menopause should be considered for hormone therapy – if eligible – to manage symptoms and protect bone and vascular health, Manson and Woodruff write.
However, the co-executive of the Connors Center for Gender Biology and Women’s Health, JoAnn Manson, says that the recommendations change for women who experience menopause before age 45. Additionally, he said, menopause may be a sign of overall aging. While early menopause hikes the risk of a heart condition, agents such as high cholesterol and hypertension could cause early menopause by damaging the blood supply to the ovary.
Another factor that causes early menopause is surgical removal of a woman’s ovaries or certain cancer treatments.
The time since the onset of menopause in relation to the risk of developing intermediate cardiovascular traits or CVD outcomes was reported in four observational studies with inconsistent results.
However, they said it was not clear whether simply taking hormone replacement therapy pills – known as HRT – would decrease the risk. “The recognition that women with early reproductive decline constitute a population at increased vascular risk provides important opportunities for early intervention in terms of both risk factor modification and, when appropriate, hormonal treatment”, they note.
Advertisement
“Women with early onset of menopause may be a group to target for proactive cardiovascular prevention strategies”, Muka told Reuters Health in an email.
