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Association of menopausal characteristics and risk of coronary heart disease: a pan-European case-cohort analysis.

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posted on 2019-09-13, 10:59 authored by V Dam, YT van der Schouw, NC Onland-Moret, RHH Groenwold, SAE Peters, S Burgess, AM Wood, M-D Chirlaque, KGM Moons, C Oliver-Williams, E Schuit, K Tikk, E Weiderpass, M Holm, A Tjønneland, T Kühn, RT Fortner, A Trichopoulou, A Karakatsani, C La Vecchia, P Ferrari, M Gunter, G Masala, S Sieri, R Tumino, S Panico, JMA Boer, WMM Verschuren, E Salamanca-Fernández, L Arriola, C Moreno-Iribas, G Engström, O Melander, M Nordendahl, P Wennberg, TJ Key, S Colorado-Yohar, G Matullo, K Overvad, F Clavel-Chapelon, H Boeing, JR Quiros, E di Angelantonio, C Langenberg, MJ Sweeting, E Riboli, NJ Wareham, J Danesh, A Butterworth
BACKGROUND: Earlier age at menopause has been associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), but the shape of association and role of established cardiovascular risk factors remain unclear. Therefore, we examined the associations between menopausal characteristics and CHD risk; the shape of the association between age at menopause and CHD risk; and the extent to which these associations are explained by established cardiovascular risk factors. METHODS: We used data from EPIC-CVD, a case-cohort study, which includes data from 23 centres from 10 European countries. We included only women, of whom 10 880 comprise the randomly selected sub-cohort, supplemented with 4522 cases outside the sub-cohort. We conducted Prentice-weighted Cox proportional hazards regressions with age as the underlying time scale, stratified by country and adjusted for relevant confounders. RESULTS: After confounder and intermediate adjustment, post-menopausal women were not at higher CHD risk compared with pre-menopausal women. Among post-menopausal women, earlier menopause was linearly associated with higher CHD risk [HRconfounder and intermediate adjusted per-year decrease = 1.02, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.01-1.03, p = 0.001]. Women with a surgical menopause were at higher risk of CHD compared with those with natural menopause (HRconfounder-adjusted = 1.25, 95% CI = 1.10-1.42, p < 0.001), but this attenuated after additional adjustment for age at menopause and intermediates (HR = 1.12, 95% CI = 0.96-1.29, p = 0.15). A proportion of the association was explained by cardiovascular risk factors. CONCLUSIONS: Earlier and surgical menopause were associated with higher CHD risk. These associations could partially be explained by differences in conventional cardiovascular risk factors. These women might benefit from close monitoring of cardiovascular risk factors and disease.

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union Framework 7 (HEALTH-F2-2012–279233), the European Research Council (268834), the UK Medical Research Council (G0800270, MR/L003120/1), the British Heart Foundation (SP/09/002, RG/08/014, RG13/13/30194) and the UK National Institute of Health Research (to EPIC-CVD). The national cohorts are supported by the Danish Cancer Society (Denmark); Ligue Contre le Cancer, Institut Gustave Roussy, Mutuelle Générale de l’Education Nationale, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) (France); Deutsche Krebshilfe, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum and Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany); Ministry of Health and Social Solidarity, Stavros Niarchos Foundation and Hellenic Health Foundation (Greece); Italian Association for Research on Cancer (AIRC) and National Research Council (Italy); Dutch Ministry of Public Health, Welfare and Sports (VWS), LK Research Funds, Dutch Prevention Funds, Dutch ZON (Zorg Onderzoek Nederland), World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), ERC-2009-AdG 232997 and Nordforsk, Nordic Centre of Excellence programme on Food, Nutrition and Health (Norway); Health Research Fund (FIS), Regional Governments of Andalucía, Asturias, Basque Country, Murcia and Navarra, ISCIII RETIC (RD06/0020) (Spain); Swedish Cancer Society, Swedish Scientific Council and Regional Government of Skåne and Västerbotten (Sweden); Cancer Research UK, Medical Research Council (UK). This work is supported by the Dutch Heart Foundation (2013T083 to V.D.). This work was supported by a UK Medical Research Council Skills Development Fellowship (MR/P014550/1 to S.A.E.P.). None of the funding sources had a role in the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, nor in the decision to submit the article for publication.

History

Citation

International Journal of Epidemiology, 2019, 48(4), pp. 1275–1285

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF LIFE SCIENCES/School of Medicine/Department of Health Sciences

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

International Journal of Epidemiology

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP) for International Epidemiological Association

eissn

1464-3685

Acceptance date

2019-02-04

Copyright date

2019

Available date

2019-09-13

Publisher version

https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/48/4/1275/5363232

Notes

Supplementary data are available at IJE online. https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/48/4/1275/5363232#supplementary-data

Language

en

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