Loading ...

TOPLINE:

Midlife women with abdominal obesity (AO), defined by a waist to height ratio (WHtR) ≥ 0.5, reported a higher prevalence and greater severity of certain menopausal symptoms. Among these women, forgetfulness, irritability, and night sweats were the most prominent symptoms which were closely linked to other complaints.

METHODOLOGY:

• As estrogen levels decline during menopause, fat shifts to the waist even without weight gain; this visceral fat releases inflammatory proteins and free fatty acids increasing the risks for insulin resistance, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers. Despite this, research on how AO shapes clusters of menopausal symptoms remains limited.
• Researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 1150 women (mean age, 50.91 years) from a multisite longitudinal cohort study in the US to evaluate the structure of menopausal symptom networks according to the presence of AO; AO was defined as WHtR ≥ 0.5; according to this definition, 705 women in the cohort had AO and 445 did not.
• Participants were aged 40-55 years and had not used estrogen or progestin in the preceding 12 months, were not pregnant, and had not undergone hysterectomy or bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy.
• The menopausal symptoms assessed were hot flashes, night sweats, joint/neck/shoulder stiffness, sleep disturbance, nocturia, decreased sexual desire, vaginal dryness, depression, dizziness, irritability, forgetfulness, palpitations, and headaches.

TAKEAWAY:

• Women with AO reported significantly higher prevalence of dizziness, hot flashes, night sweats, nocturia, sleep disturbances, and palpitations (P <.05 for all), along with greater severity for several of these symptoms.
• Network analysis, examining how symptoms are interconnected, showed that women with AO had slightly more connections among menopausal symptoms than women without AO (network density, 0.59; 46 of 78 edges vs 0.55; 43 of 78 edges); the pattern of symptom relationships differed between the groups, with notable differences in the links between forgetfulness and vaginal dryness, low sexual desire and trouble falling asleep, dizziness and palpitations, and nocturia and palpitations.
• In women with AO, the top pairings were hot flashes with night sweats, irritability with depression, and stiffness with forgetfulness; forgetfulness and irritability were the most prominent symptoms in the network, followed by night sweats.
• Symptom clusters differed between groups. In the AO network, vasomotor symptoms clustered with sleep disturbances, whereas in the non-AO network, vasomotor symptoms clustered separately from sleep disturbances; decreased sexual desire was isolated in both networks.

IN PRACTICE:

“These findings may inform more individualized symptom assessment and management,” the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Diya Wang, MN, Shantou University Medical College in Shantou, Guangdong Province, China. It was published online in Menopause.

LIMITATIONS:

The predominance of White participants may have limited generalizability to other racial and ethnic groups. As a secondary analysis employing listwise deletion for missing data, the analytic sample may not have fully represented the broader cohort, and selection bias cannot be ruled out. Reliance on self-reported data may have introduced reporting bias.

DISCLOSURES:

No funding or support was reported for this study. The authors reported having no relevant conflicts of interest or financial disclosures.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.