Paris (AFP)

Women Who Have Early Menopause, Age 40 or Less, Are Three Times More Risk of Developing Chronic and Multiple Medical Problems in Their Sixties Than Those Who Are 50 or 51, Study Finds published Monday.

"Healthcare professionals should consider comprehensive screening and assessment of risk factors when treating women with early menopause," said Gita Mishra, researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane (Australia) and lead author of Article.

The study published in the journal Human Reproduction covers more than 5,000 Australian women, aged 45 to 50 in 1996 and followed until 2016. The analysis is limited to natural menopause (premature menopause following surgery has been excluded).

However, other studies on other populations are necessary to validate these results, recognize the researchers.

As the life expectancy of women in high income countries is now over 80 years, one third of a woman's life is spent after menopause.

It is already known that premature menopause, which occurs at the age of 40 or younger, is linked to a number of medical problems that arise later in life, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

However, there is little information on the existence of a link between natural menopause and the development of multiple medical problems - known as multimorbidity.

Women responded to a first survey in 1996, to a second two years later, then every three years until 2016.

They were able to indicate whether they had been diagnosed or treated for any of the following eleven health problems in the past three years: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, osteoporosis, asthma, chronic lung disease ( COPD), depression, anxiety or breast cancer.

Women were considered to have multimorbidity if they suffered from at least two of these conditions.

During the twenty years observed, 2.3% of women had premature menopause and 55% developed multimorbidity.

Compared with women who were menopausal at 50-51 years of age, those who were prematurely were twice as likely to have a combination of pathologies or mulitmorbidity at the age of 60 years and three times more from 60 years.

Premature menopause remains associated with this increased risk, even after taking into account other factors that could affect the results (having or not having children, number of children, education, overweight, smoking , physical activity...).

The study does not show that premature menopause is the cause of multimorbidity, only that it is strongly associated with it.

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