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Jump to Key Points Both the number and the severity of menopausal symptoms were greater among midlife women with type 2 diabetes (T2D) than among those without, results from a cross-sectional observational study showed.
These findings “suggest the importance of integrating menopausal symptom assessment and management into diabetes care,” wrote You Lee Yang, PhD, RN, of the College of Nursing, Eulji University, Seongnam-si, Republic of Korea, and colleagues in their paper, recently published in Menopause.
The researchers looked at data from 296 women aged 40-64 years in Korea. Of these, 220 had T2D or prediabetes, and 76 had normoglycemia, based on fasting blood glucose and A1c levels. Overall, 68.6% of the women were postmenopausal, 12.8% were perimenopausal, and 18.6% were premenopausal. Menopausal symptoms were assessed using the Midlife Women’s Symptom Index (MSI).
The women with T2D were older than those without diabetes (55.6 vs 53.5 years; P = .005) and had a higher BMI (23.4 vs 21.8; P < .001). A higher proportion in the T2D group were postmenopausal (72.7% vs 56.6%; P < .001).
- T2D linked to ↑ menopausal symptom count and severity.
- Study: 296 Korean women age 40-64; 220 with T2D/prediabetes.
- T2D group older, higher BMI, more often postmenopausal.
- Physical + psychosomatic symptoms differed most; psychological domain less affected.
- T2D association with symptom severity persisted after adjustment.
In addition, women with T2D reported a significantly higher mean number of menopausal symptoms than those without diabetes (20.30 vs 15.88; P = .003) and had higher mean severity scores (36.53 vs 26.11; P = .005).
The main differences in symptom prevalence were seen in the physical and psychosomatic domains of the MSI but not in the psychological domain (P = .003, .149, and .017, respectively). For symptom severity, significant group differences were found in the physical domain but not in the psychological or psychosomatic domains (P < .001, .476, and .277, respectively).
Although women with T2D reported more menopausal symptoms than did those without diabetes across all menopausal stages, subgroup analyses showed that the difference was only significant in the postmenopausal stage (P = .006). The same was true for symptom severity, with the significant difference only in the postmenopausal group (P = .008).
Even after adjustment for background and health-related characteristics, having T2D was still significantly associated with menopausal symptom severity (P = .040).
Yang and colleagues concluded, “Our findings, which are consistent with and extend prior studies, indicate that women with T2D or prediabetes experience a significantly greater number and higher severity of menopausal symptoms, highlighting their burden as a salient clinical characteristic of midlife women with impaired glucose metabolism. These results underscore the importance of incorporating systematic assessment of menopausal symptoms into diabetes care for midlife women.”
The study was funded by Eulji University. The authors reported no disclosures.
Miriam E. Tucker is a freelance journalist based in the Washington, DC, area. She is a regular contributor to Medscape, with other work appearing in The Washington Post, NPR’s Shots blog, and diaTribe. She is on X @MiriamETucker and BlueSky @miriametucker.bsky.social.
