Scientific American says the research offers clues about what happens to the body during menopause.
Scientific American highlights a new study about bodily changes during menopause, saying it offers clues to a possible “physiological cliff.”
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A Nature Medicine study suggests that menopause may involve abrupt changes across several body systems, rather than only a gradual transition. The researchers analyzed more than 300 million laboratory tests from over 1 million women in U.S. and Israeli datasets.
The team used a computational method adapted from astronomical image processing. Because the age of a person’s final menstrual period was not recorded for every test, the method estimated average biological trajectories relative to that event from cross-sectional data. It does not predict the timing of menopause for an individual.
In the U.S. dataset, 52 of 90 laboratory measures showed a statistically significant step-like change around the final menstrual period. The affected measures covered sex hormones, bone health, liver and kidney function, blood chemistry, inflammation and blood fats. Comparable jumps were not seen when the same analysis was applied to male data.
The study also traced some hormonal changes much earlier. Anti-Müllerian hormone and estradiol began shifting rapidly about 15 and 12 years before the final menstrual period, respectively, while follicle-stimulating hormone changed roughly 14 years beforehand.
Women using menopausal hormone therapy showed smaller shifts in several measures, particularly those related to bone, liver and kidney function. That finding is an association, not proof that hormone therapy prevented the changes.
The authors call the pattern a physiological “cliff,” but an independent expert interviewed by ABC News cautioned against reading the phrase as a universal decline. Some measures improved, others worsened and the clinical significance of many changes remains unclear.
The study was retrospective and cross-sectional, and some menopause timing was self-reported. Because many blood tests were taken for clinical reasons, the sample may overrepresent people with health concerns. Hormone-therapy users were also not randomly assigned, so pre-existing differences between users and non-users could help explain the association.
The results offer a large-scale way to study menopause, but they do not establish new treatment guidance. The hormone-therapy finding and the proposed “cliff” pattern will need confirmation in prospective studies and clinical trials.
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