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Aortic stiffness changes indicator of vascular aging during, after menopause
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Among women undergoing menopausal transition, changes in aortic stiffness were a more sensitive measure of perimenopausal vascular aging compared with morphologic indexes of subclinical atherosclerosis, according to a study published in The American Journal of Cardiology.
Zubair A. Khan, MD, resident in the department of cardiovascular disease at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, New Jersey, and colleagues analyzed data from 411 women (mean age, 51 years) from the SWAN Heart study. Women were categorized based on their menopause transition status: premenopause to postmenopause (n = 93; mean age, 50 years), premenopause to premenopause (n = 147; mean age, 49 years) or postmenopause to postmenopause (n = 171; mean age, 53 years).
Women underwent two assessments, a baseline exam and a follow-up exam about 2 years later. A battery of tests was also performed to collect information on carotid intima-media thickness, coronary calcium, lipid profiles and aortic pulse-wave velocity. Annual assessments of hormone therapy use, menopause status and the occurrence of either a hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy were performed annually in the SWAN study. A questionnaire was collected at the initial examination for information on smoking, demographics, family history and medical conditions.
During a mean follow-up of 2.3 years, all groups had similar BP readings, carotid intima-media thickness and long coronary artery calcium plus one (P > .2 for all). Women in the premenopausal to postmenopausal group had greater changes in aortic pulse wave velocity (121 cm/s) compared with those in the premenopausal to premenopausal (38 cm/s; P = .029) and the postmenopausal to postmenopausal groups (41 cm/s; P = .045).
“Changes in arterial stiffness in individual women may identify a cohort particularly prone to worsening of cardiovascular risk, potentially pointing the way for serial change to be used as a marker of trajectory in women undergoing menopausal transition,” Khan and colleagues wrote. “Serial studies could provide a measure of vascular aging in women at different stages of menopause irrespective of their biologic age, something that might have mechanistic implications, and could conceivably help identify individual women at greater risk for progression of CVD.” – by Darlene Dobkowski
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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