The impact of years since menopause on the development of impaired glucosetolerance

This is a community-based population survey carried out by the Yang-Ming Cr usade to investigate the impact of years since menopause on the development of glucose intolerance in post-menopausal women. A total of 5412 women wer e screened with fasting plasma glucose. Those with fasting plasma glucose l evels between 5.5 and 7.8 mM were given an oral glucose tolerance test. Amo ng the 5412 women screened, 2039 (37.7%) were post-menopausal with a median age at menopause of 49 years. Pre-menopausal women showed impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and diabetes mellitus (DM) prevalences of 3.7% and 3.1% re spectively, whereas the corresponding figures for post-menopausal women wer e 8.4% and 17.6%, respectively. Comparing DM versus normal glucose toleranc e (NGT) and IGT versus NGT as dependent variables in logistic regression an alysis, menopause status was significantly associated with DM and ICT. In p ost-menopausal women, after maintaining body mass index, waist-hip ratio, s ystolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, family history of DM, age at menopause, cholesterol, high density lipoprotein cholesterol and trigly cerides as controls, years since menopause was the only significant factor associated with IGT (OR = 1.05, 95%CI 1.01-1.08) and years since menopause was not associated with DM. Further anlaysis indicated years since menopaus e (OR = 1.06, 95%CI, 1.01-1.11) was the only factor significantly associate d with IGT for women whose age at menopause was greater than 49 years. Our study indicates that in subjects who have not undergone hormone replacement therapy and whose age at menopause is greater than 49 years, an increase i n years since menopause confers a negative influence on glucose tolerance a nd increases the risk of IGT by 6% for each year after menopause. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.