A later menopausal age is associated with a lower prevalence of physical frailty in community-dwelling older adults: The Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study (KFACS)

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine whether age at menopause is associated with physical frailty. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study that included 1264 women (70-84 years) from the Korean and Aging Cohort Study (KFACS) who had records of their ages at menarche and their ages at menopause and had experienced a natural menopause. We used Fried criteria to assess physical frailty status. The ages at menopause and menarche were collected using self-reported questionnaires. Results: The prevalence of physical frailty decreased by 5.3 % with each year of increase in age at menopause after adjusting for age, marital status, years of education, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, polypharmacy, hospitalizations, falls, and hormone replacement therapy (p = 0.005). The prevalence of frailty significantly decreased by 4.1 % when the reproductive span increased by a year (p = 0.019). Conclusions: This study found that a later menopausal age was associated with a lower risk of frailty using Fried criteria. In addition, it showed that a longer reproductive span was associated with a lower prevalence of frailty.