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Late menopause may lower type 2 diabetes risk

Later age at menopause was associated with lower risk for type 2 diabetes, according to a meta-analysis published in Primary Care Diabetes.

“In view of the inconsistent results of previous studies, we performed a dose-response meta-analysis of all available data from cohort studies of age at menopause and risk of type 2 diabetes,” Chunmei Guo, of the department of epidemiology and health statistics at Zhengzhou University in the People’s Republic of China, and colleagues wrote.

 

Later age at menopause was associated with lower risk for type 2 diabetes, according to a meta-analysis published in Primary Care Diabetes.

Source:Adobe

The meta-analysis included six studies, with a total of 267,284 women and 19,654 cases of type 2 diabetes. The average age of the women ranged from 56.1 to 66.9 years, and the longest follow-up period was 12.2 years.

According to Guo and colleagues, the pooled RR for type 2 diabetes was 0.64 (95% CI, 0.44-0.94) when comparing the latest with the earliest category of age at menopause. The risk for type 2 diabetes was reduced by 10% (RR = 0.9; 95% CI, 0.84–0.98) for each 5-year increment in age at menopause.

“Our meta-analysis differs from previous original studies because we based [ours] on cohort studies and larger sample size, which increased the reliability and accuracy of the effect estimates, and further quantified the dose-response association between age at menopause and type 2 diabetes,” Guo and colleagues wrote. – by Janel Miller

Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.