Menopause with cardiovascular disease and its risk factors among rural Chinese women in Beijing: A population-based study

Objectives: This study was to explore the independent influence of menopause on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and its risk factors in rural Chinese females. Study design: This cross-sectional population-based study enrolled 2245 premenopausal and 2498 postmenopausal women aged 40-59 years in Fangshan district, Beijing. China. Data was collected by face-to-face interview, physical examination and biochemical examination during 2009 and 2010. General liner models were employed to calculate age-adjusted means of cardiovascular risk factors (CRFs). The comparisons of CVD and it risk factors according to menopausal status, and calculation of adjusted odds ratios/coefficients and their 95% confidence intervals for the associations of quartiles of elapsed time since menopause and age at menopause with CVD and its risk factors was performed by multivariate logistic/liner regression models separately. Results: After adjustment for age and other confounders, no statistically significant association of menopause with CVD was observed in our participants; however, dyslipidemia prevalence and levels of waist-to-hip ratio, triglycerides, total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were presented higher in postmenopausal group, compared to the premenopausal one (P < 0.05). Compared to women who had been menopausal for less than 1 year, those with the elapsed time since menopause of 2-3 years had higher CHD prevalence, higher triglycerides level and lower high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Postmenopausal women in rural China had worse CRFs profile than the premenopausal ones, which implied menopause might aggravate the CRFs epidemic beyond effects of aging, and would increase the CVD burden during and after their middle ages. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.