Keeping a close eye on women’s reproductive health could give insights into their future cardiovascular risk after a new JAMA study found that women who experience premature menopause face higher lifetime risk of coronary heart disease (CHD).
- The average age for menopause for most women is 51, with premature menopause occurring in women under 40.
- Current cardiovascular risk assessment doesn’t really incorporate reproductive history factors despite early estrogen loss influencing ASCVD progression.
- It also hasn’t been clear how premature menopause impacts women of different racial/ethnic backgrounds.
To answer these questions, researchers followed 10k postmenopausal women (65% White, 35% Black) free of baseline coronary heart disease from 1964-2018, finding that lifetime risk calculations revealed concerning patterns…
- Premature menopause increased lifetime CHD risk by 40% between the two groups with a hazard ratio of 1.41 for Black women and 1.39 for White women.
- However, PM occurred over three-fold more frequently in Black women (15.5%) versus White women (4.8%), leading to higher absolute CHD burden despite similar risk.
These results suggest that premature menopause is an important risk-enhancing factor for women, so adding it into the consideration is important, but it also serves as a stress test for a woman’s body.
- That’s because menopause at any age changes a woman’s body in drastic ways, with lipids and BP often increasing, while energy and muscle mass decrease.
- This ultimately leads to a less active lifestyle and the compounding of cardiovascular risk factors like increased body fat, hypertension, and hormonal changes.
The Takeaway
As the research on women’s cardiovascular health expands, one thing becomes increasingly clear – cardiologists cannot evaluate and treat the female heart the same as the male. Special considerations are needed for women whose bodies drastically change from fertility, to pregnancy, to eventually menopause.
