A study given at the 26th European Congress of Endocrinology in Stockholm found that women who go through menopause before age 40 are more likely to die young. Hormone treatment may lower their risk, though. This long-term Finnish study is the biggest one ever done on the link between early menopause and death.
Menopause usually happens to women between the ages of 45 and 55. It's called premature
menopause or premature ovarian insufficiency (POI), and about 1% of women go
through it before they turn 40.
Long-term health problems like heart disease are more likely to happen to these people. People don't know why this happens most of the time, but it can happen on its own or after chemotherapy or having the ovaries taken out. A lot of women go through early menopause use hormone replacement therapy (HRT), but most of them don't follow the directions and take the drugs as directed.
This study looked at 5,817 women in Finland who were identified with natural or
artificial premature ovarian insufficiency between 1988 and 2017. The
researchers were from the University of Oulu and Oulu University Hospital. They
looked at these women along with 22,859 women who did not have POI and
discovered that women with POI were more than twice as likely to die of any
cause or heart disease and more than four times as likely to die of cancer. But
women who used hormone replacement treatment for more than six months had a
risk of death from any cause or cancer that was about half as high. Women who
went through surgery and went through menopause early did not have an increased
risk of death.
Studies have also shown that women who go through menopause too soon are more
likely to die young. "As far as we know, this
is the largest study that looks at the link between premature ovarian
insufficiency and death risk," said the study's leader, PhD student Hilla
Haapakoski at the University of Oulu.
The next thing the team will do is look into whether women who go through early
menopause are more likely to have other diseases or conditions, like cancer or
heart disease, and whether long-term hormone treatment changes these
conditions. "Many of the health risks that women with premature ovarian
insufficiency face have not been fully understood, and the use of HRT is often
overlooked." "We hope to improve the health of these women by making
doctors and nurses and the women themselves more aware of the risks," Ms.
Haapakoski said.
