Women who reach menopause unusually early already carry a higher long-term risk of dying sooner and of developing heart disease and dementia. A study published online August 12 in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society, asked a question clinical practice has largely skipped: does it matter what kind of life those women are living?
It does, by a wider margin than most clinical protocols would suggest. Among 19,912 UK Biobank women who went through early natural menopause, those in the most socially disadvantaged third had a 75% higher risk of dying from any cause than those in the least disadvantaged third over a median of nearly 11 years. Their risk of incident dementia was 83% higher.
