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Entering menopause before age 40 is associated with a 35% higher risk of developing dementia later in life, a preliminary study has found.
Premature menopause, as it’s called, occurs when a woman’s ovaries stop making hormones and menses The cycle ends by the age of 40. That’s about a dozen years before the normal onset of menopause, which is the age of 52 in the United States. US Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health,
“What we see in this study is a modest association between the risk of premature menopause and later dementia,” said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, president of the American Heart Association. He was not involved in the study.
Why do women go through menopause prematurely? Unless the woman has had surgery to remove her ovaries and uterus, “it has to do with the more rapid biological aging of all of the body’s tissues, including the premature aging of our organs and their functions,” says Lloyd- Jones, who is a professor of preventive medicine, medicine, and pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“When a woman goes through premature menopause it is a red flag on many levels, because it indicates that there may be some underlying genetic, environmental or health behavioral problem that we really need to pay attention to,” she said. need to be focused.”
The study, which has not been published but will be presented this week at the American Heart Association’s 2022 conference, examined data from more than 153,000 women participating in the UK Biobank, an ongoing study of half a million people living Examines genetic and health information on United Kingdom.
“The scope and breadth of the data is important and impressive, but it does not give us the details we need to understand the full implications of the study,” Lloyd-Jones said.
Studies adjusted for age, race, weight, educational and income level, cigarette and alcohol use, heart disease, diabetes and physical activity. It found that women who became menopausal before age 45 were 1.3 times more likely to be diagnosed with early dementia by age 65.
Early menopause, which occurs between the ages of 40 and 45, is differentiated from premature menopause before the age of 40, but can be caused by both many similar factors: a family history; autoimmune disorders, including chronic fatigue syndrome; HIV and AIDS; chemotherapy or pelvic radiation treatment for cancer; surgery to remove the ovaries and uterus; and smoking.
“Functional menopause due to surgery is less risky than early organic menopause, because again this can be a red flag that other tissues are aging more rapidly, so a woman should really see her doctor. needs and plans to adapt to all of his health factors,” Lloyd-Jones said.
When women enter menopause, estrogen levels drop, which may be one reason for the study’s findings, said study author Wenting Hao, a doctoral candidate at Shandong University in Jinan, China.
“We know that long-term estrogen deficiency increases oxidative stress, which can lead to brain aging and cognitive impairment,” Hao said in a statement.
Oxidative stress occurs when the body’s antioxidant defenses cannot keep up with an excess of radicals, or unstable atoms, that can damage cells. Free radicals occur naturally in the body as a byproduct of cell metabolism, but levels can be increased by smoking, exposure to environmental toxins, pesticides, dyes, and air pollution.
“However, I think that premature menopause is a more important sign than it is about estrogen,” Lloyd-Jones said. “Just as gestational diabetes or preeclampsia should be a sign, say premature menopause it is a woman who is on a fast path to having a problem with her heart or brain.
“Let’s control everything we can about her diet, physical activity, weight, and smoking with lifestyle changes,” Lloyd-Jones said.
Hao said there are several ways women who experience early menopause may be able to reduce their risk of cognitive decline.
“This includes getting regular exercise, participating in leisure and educational activities, not smoking and not drinking alcohol[and]maintaining a healthy weight,” Hao said. “Being aware of this increased risk can help women practice strategies to prevent dementia and work with their physicians to closely monitor their cognitive status.”