Early-Onset Diabetes Tied to Earlier Age of Menopause

TUESDAY, Oct. 18, 2022 (HealthDay News) — The age at which a woman is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) or type 2 diabetes (T2D) may impact age of natural menopause, according to a study presented Oct. 12 at the North American Menopause Society (NAMS) annual meeting in Atlanta.

Vrati Mehra, from University of Toronto in Canada, and colleagues assessed long-term implications of premenopausal diabetes on women’s reproductive health including their age at natural menopause. The analysis included 11,436 participants (aged 45 to 85 years) who reported having a premenopausal diagnosis of T1D, T2D, or gestational diabetes (GD).

The researchers found that when adjusting for ethnicity, education, smoking, and premenopausal factors including gravidity, early age of diagnosis of both T1D (younger than 30 years) and T2D (30 to 39 years) was associated with earlier menopause (T1D <30: hazard ratio [HR], 1.55; T2D 30 to 39 years: HR, 1.82) compared with women without diabetes. Later age of diagnosis of T2D diabetes (older than 50 years) was associated with later age at natural menopause (HR, 0.39). There were no significant associations between GD and age of natural menopause.

“This research adds to the growing evidence relative to the collective toll diabetes takes on the human body,” Stephanie Faubion, M.D., NAMS medical director, said in a statement. “In this case, it shows that young women living with a diagnosis of diabetes are more susceptible to accelerated ovarian aging and early menopause.”

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