"SWAN is a unique resource of information on changes in women's health and wellness over several years, and this is the newest in a lengthy line of research by our group and others that suggests the menopausal shift is an extremely important time for heart health and wellness," says lead writer Saad Samargandy, a PhD trainee at Pitt Public Health and wellness. "While there are restrictions to our study, consisting of that a large minority of the ladies had their arterial stiffness measured at just once point, we were still able to see that significant changes to heart disease risk occur about menopause."
This study complies with several others that link the menopausal shift to the build-up of heart fat, changes in cholesterol, swelling, and coronary artery calcification, to name a few cardiovascular disease risk factors, the scientists say.
"Our study isn't able to inform us why we're seeing these changes throughout the menopausal shift," El Khoudary says. "But we hypothesize that the remarkable hormone changes going along with menopause might contribute by enhancing swelling and impacting vascular fat deposition, a hypothesis that we would certainly prefer to test in future studies."
Scientists will need to conduct medical tests to test if lifestyle treatments, such as changes to diet or physical activity; medications, such as statins or hormonal agent substitute therapy; or also enhanced testing and monitoring of measures of heart health and wellness could benefit ladies as they undergo menopause, Khoudary says.
"But we can say, today, that ladies should be informeded that their cardio health and wellness is most likely to intensify as they undergo menopause. Therefore, regular monitoring of cardio risk factors may be sensible, especially in black ladies that go to also greater risk previously in the menopausal shift."
Additional writers are from Rush College, Cooper College Medical facility, and the College of Pittsburgh. The Nationwide Institutes of Health and wellness moneyed the work.