Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Jan 4;15(1):2.
doi: 10.1186/s12916-016-0762-8.

Unraveling the associations of age and menopause with cardiovascular risk factors in a large population-based study

A C de Kat  1   2 , V Dam  2 , N C Onland-Moret  2 , M J C Eijkemans  2 , F J M Broekmans  1 , Y T van der Schouw  3
Affiliations

Unraveling the associations of age and menopause with cardiovascular risk factors in a large population-based study

A C de Kat et al. BMC Med. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Background: Although the association between menopause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk has been studied extensively, the simultaneous role of chronological aging herein remains underexposed. This study aims to disentangle the relationships of menopausal status and chronological aging with CVD risk factors in the largest study population to date.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, CVD risk factors were compared between women with a different menopausal status within the same yearly age strata. The study population comprised female participants of the baseline visit of the population-based LifeLines Cohort Study. A total of 63,466 women, aged between 18 and 65 years, was included. Of them, 39,379 women were considered to be premenopausal, 8669 were perimenopausal, 14,514 were naturally postmenopausal, and 904 were surgically postmenopausal.

Results: Compared to postmenopausal women aged 45 years, average total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c) were 0.5 and 0.4 mmol/L higher, respectively, in postmenopausal women aged 50. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels were 4 and 1 mmHg higher, respectively. At all ages between 46 and 55 years, and after adjustment for confounders, naturally postmenopausal women had 0.2 to 0.4 mmol/L higher TC and 0.1 to 0.3 mmol/L higher LDL-c levels compared to premenopausal women in the same age range. Systolic blood pressure levels were up to 4 mmHg lower in naturally post- compared to premenopausal women at all ages between 29 and 52 years. Body mass index levels were up to 3.2 kg/m2 higher in women with surgical menopause compared to all other women between the ages 32 and 52 years. All aforementioned results were statistically significant.

Conclusions: Chronological age and menopausal status are both independently associated with CVD risk factors. Based on the comparatively smaller observed differences associated with menopausal status than with chronological aging, the significance of a more unfavorable lipid profile in a later reproductive stage may be less obvious than previously thought.

Keywords: Cardiovascular risk; Female aging; Menopause.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
a–h Associations of adjusted cardiovascular risk factors with age per menopausal status group. Cardiovascular risk factor levels were adjusted for age, oral contraceptive use, smoking status and body mass index. The premenopausal status group comprised a total of 39,379 women, whereas the perimenopausal group comprised 8669 women, the naturally postmenopausal group 14,514 women, and the surgically postmenopausal group 904 women. a Systolic blood pressure, b Diastolic blood pressure, c Total cholesterol, d LDL-cholesterol, e HDL-cholesterol, f Glucose, g Triglycerides and h Body mass index
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. van der Schouw YT, van der Graaf Y, Steyerberg EW, Eijkemans JC, Banga JD. Age at menopause as a risk factor for cardiovascular mortality. Lancet. 1996;347(9003):714–718. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(96)90075-6. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Lisabeth LD, Beiser AS, Brown DL, Murabito JM, Kelly-Hayes M, Wolf PA. Age at natural menopause and risk of ischemic stroke: the Framingham heart study. Stroke. 2009;40(4):1044–1049. doi: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.108.542993. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. El Khoudary SR, Santoro N, Chen HY, Tepper PG, Brooks MM, Thurston RC, et al. Trajectories of estradiol and follicle-stimulating hormone over the menopause transition and early markers of atherosclerosis after menopause. Eur J Prev Cardiol. 2016;23(7):694–703. doi: 10.1177/2047487315607044. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Auro K, Joensuu A, Fischer K, Kettunen J, Salo P, Mattsson H, et al. A metabolic view on menopause and ageing. Nat Commun. 2014;5:4708. doi: 10.1038/ncomms5708. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Peters HW, Westendorp IC, Hak AE, Grobbee DE, Stehouwer CD, Hofman A, et al. Menopausal status and risk factors for cardiovascular disease. J Intern Med. 1999;246(6):521–528. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2796.1999.00547.x. - DOI - PubMed
  NODES
Association 8
INTERN 1
twitter 2