Effects of hypertension on menopausal onset.

BACKGROUND

This study aimed to confirm the association between hypertension and the onset of menopause in Koreans.

METHODS

For this retrospective cross-sectional study, data for women aged 40 to 80 years with natural menopause were extracted using the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (IV~VIII) (2007~2019). Women with hypertension before menopause were included in the case group, and women without hypertension before menopause were included in the control group. The relationship between hypertension and onset of menopause was evaluated through multivariate linear regression analysis.

RESULTS

Of the 105,732 participants, we selected 23,441 women aged 40 to 80 years who had no history of cancer and had undergone natural menopause. This cohort comprised 16,839 women without a history of hypertension and 6,602 women with hypertension. The median age at menopause was 52 [50; 54] and 50 [47; 52] years in the hypertension and control groups, respectively. Hypertension (Beta coefficient [BC]±standard error [SE], 1.93±0.13) increased menopausal age. In the subgroup analysis, there was no significant difference in menopausal age according to the gap between menopausal age and age at hypertension diagnosis.

CONCLUSIONS

This study found an association between hypertension and the onset of menopause, such that women diagnosed with hypertension before menopause had a higher menopausal age. However, the timing of the diagnosis of hypertension was not related to the onset age of menopause.