New Delhi: Menopause may not be the gradual side-effect of ageing it is commonly assumed to be. Instead, the transition could resemble a physiological cliff, with abrupt changes in bone health, liver and kidney function, and blood chemistry, a new study has found.
The study was published in Nature Medicine on 12 October and led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
“We analyzed two large datasets totalling more than 300 million laboratory tests, indicating that menopause is characterized by a ‘physiological cliff’, defined as abrupt, step-like changes across nearly all physiological systems,” read the study.
Also read: 43% of women with autoimmune diseases are told they have psychiatric issues
A physiological cliff
Menopause is caused by exhausted ovarian follicles. While a person is still capable of reproduction, the ovaries develop follicles that produce and release eggs. The hormones behind this process, estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone, all have significant effects across the body. Some of the major changes during the menopausal phase are due to the changes in sex hormones years before menopause.
“Because sex hormone receptors are expressed in almost all human tissues, with effects on brain, vasculature, bone, liver and adipose tissue, these hormonal dynamics reverberate beyond fertility to many physiological systems,” read the study.
According to the researchers, even though menopause reshapes female physiology, it is little understood. The large biomedical datasets which record menopausal details are hardly used because the age of the ‘final menstrual period’ or FMP is rarely recorded.
Researchers used a computational framework often used in astronomy to reconstruct the FMP age in two independent cohorts totalling 300 million laboratory tests.
“For instance, osteoporosis shows an increase after menopause that strongly outpaces that of age-matched male individuals, consistent with the large effects observed in bone-related laboratory tests. Cardiovascular outcomes, such as heart attack and stroke, also demonstrate an increased risk slope following the transition,” the study added.
The authors wrote that earlier studies have established this bone loss and hormonal surges, the scale of the study is new. It looks at 90 types of tests which prove that the transition after menopause is “sharp and systemic”.