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 Menarche tends to occur earlier in obese children, so the link
between earlier periods and later heart disease risk was expected,
said lead author Dr. Dexter Canoy of the University of Oxford in the
U.K.
But his team was surprised to find another increase in risk for
older age at menarche, he told Reuters Health by email.
“Menarche, onset of first full menstrual cycle, is a marker of
puberty and the onset of endocrine functions relating to
reproduction, but why the timing of menarche is associated with
increased vascular disease risk remains unclear,” Canoy said.
Researchers studied health data for more than one million U.K. women
ages 50 to 64, including reproductive and medical history and
national data on deaths and hospitalizations over the subsequent
decade.
Over the course of about 11 years, almost 250,000 women were
hospitalized for or died from complications of high blood pressure,
73,000 developed heart disease and more than 25,000 had suffered a
stroke.
Those who had their first period at age 13, about 25 percent of the
group, had the lowest risk of heart problems during the study.
Compared to those women, the four percent who reported having their
first period at age 10 or younger were about 27 percent more likely
to develop heart disease.
Heart disease risk increased almost as much for the one percent of
women who started menstruating at age 17 or older, according to data
in the journal Circulation.
Stroke and high blood pressure patterns were similar, but the
increases in risk were smaller than for heart disease, the authors
write.
“This is a very interesting paper confirming previous association
studies showing links between early menarche and cardiovascular
disease risk,” said David Dunger, a pediatric clinical scientist at
the University of Cambridge in the U.K. who was not involved in the
new study.
But previous studies have not included such a large group of women,
he told Reuters Health by email.
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The risks remained even when the authors accounted for body size,
smoking and socioeconomic status, Canoy said.
These findings are likely applicable to middle-aged Caucasian women
born between 1930 and 1950 in industrialized countries, Canoy said.
The women in the current study were mostly white.
Researchers need to see whether the findings are similar in women of
different ethnicities or from less industrialized countries, he
added.
Heart disease risk was slightly different for women whose first
period came at age 12 compared to those who started at age 15, but
so small as to likely be clinically unimportant, he said.
“Strategies to prevent excess weight gain during childhood may also
avoid menarche occurring at an earlier age than necessary, which in
turn could reduce the risk of developing heart disease and stroke in
the long-term,” Canoy said.
Average age at menarche has been on the decline since the late
1800s, Canoy noted.
“What is currently unexplained is whether the timing of menarche per
se is somehow what is crucial or is there another factor
occurring/operating at around middle-age (which might happen to be a
correlate of age at menarche) that increases susceptibility to the
development of heart disease,” Canoy said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/16pD4Si Circulation, online December 15, 2014.
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