Late Menopause Associated with Greater Asthma Risk

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Women who have menopause late have a 30% greater risk of developing asthma when compared to women who have menopause early, according to a study published recently in Menopause.

Results are based on 10 years of follow up data from more than 14,000 women between ages 45 to 85, gathered using the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA). Research was completed by a team of researchers consisting of Durmalouk Kesibi, MA, Michael Rotondi, Ph.D., Heather Edgell, Ph.D., and Hala Tamim, Ph.D. all from the School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University in Toronto.

Women are considered to have entered menopause when they have gone at least 12 months without a menstrual period, caused when the ovaries stop functioning. This leads to a drop in sex hormones progesterone and estrogen. The average age of menopause is 51, but it’s considered early menopause when it occurs between ages 40 and 44.

Previous studies have shown there may be a relationship between asthma and sex hormones. One study reported that women on hormone therapy have a 63% increased asthma risk and women who stopped therapy were twice as likely to quit asthma treatment.

This latest finding is significant because early menopause has traditionally been linked to a range of long-term health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis.

Asthma affects more than 300 million people worldwide and is more common in boys.

However, adult asthma is more common, more severe and therefore more difficult to treat in women.

Asthma is also associated with a high economic burden. In the United States in 2022, the estimated total annualized medical costs of asthma were $21 billion and incremental costs totaled $3.8 billion.

“This study highlights sex-based differences in asthma, with women at a greater risk for asthma than men in adulthood,”Stephanie Faubion, M.D., MBA, medical director for The Menopause Society said in a news release. “Clinicians should be aware of this link and should monitor women with later age at natural menopause for asthma symptoms.”

The CLSA is of a 20-year study launched in 2010 to get a better understanding of the physiological, biological and social changes associated with aging. The full CLSA study contains data from 51,338 men and women.