Early menopause has been linked to a number of health problems, including heart disease, stroke and loss of bone density.
But there doesn’t appear to be a similar link between early menopause and a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers reported today in the journal Menopause.
Women who enter menopause before age 45 have about the same diabetes risk as women who experience menopause later in middle age, results showed.
“Our findings … do not support the initial hypothesis that menopause generates a metabolic change favorable to insulin resistance and the consequent development of diabetes,” concluded the research team led by José Antonio Quesada, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at Miguel Hernández University of Elche in Spain.
Women in menopause undergo changes in their bodies that can raise diabetes risk, including increased fat and insulin resistance, researchers said in background notes.
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As such, researchers thought women who enter menopause early might have an even higher risk of diabetes, given that those factors will affect them longer during their lives.
To test that theory, researchers tracked nearly 147,000 female participants in the UK Biobank, a long-term health research project in the United Kingdom, for an average of more than 14 years.
Nearly 6,600 women, under 5% of the participants, were diagnosed with diabetes during the follow-up period.
Results showed no significant link between age of menopause onset and risk of developing diabetes.
Even though women with early menopause appeared to have a slightly higher rate of diabetes, 5% versus 4%, this difference disappeared when researchers considered other potential factors.
Other factors appeared to have more influence over diabetes risk, including:
- Smoking, with a nearly 8% increased risk
- Obesity, with 11% higher risk
- No vegetable intake, 7% increased risk
- Cholesterol medications, 10% higher risk
- High added salt intake, 7% increased risk
“The results of this study highlight that, although postmenopausal women are at increased risk for diabetes, it does not appear to be related to the age at menopause onset or whether menopause occurs naturally or due to surgery but rather to cardiovascular and lifestyle risk factors,” Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director for The Menopause Society, said in a news release.
“This is somewhat reassuring in that cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension and hyperlipidemia, can be controlled, and lifestyle factors, such as smoking, diet, and exercise are modifiable, whereas age at menopause is not,” added Faubion, who was not involved in the study.