2024 Girls’s Well being Analysis Symposium: Advancing Girls’s Well being By way of Menopause Analysis

Creator: Shayda Swann | Editors: Romina Garcia de leon (Weblog Co-coordinator) and Katherine Moore (Director of Operations)

Revealed: April 4, 2024

On Worldwide Girls’s Day (March eighth 2024), the Girls’s Well being Analysis Institute hosted the ninth annual Girls’s Well being Analysis Symposium, titled Midlife Girls’s Well being Analysis: Unpacking the Science of the Menopause Journey and its Well being Impacts. On this weblog, we’ll be highlighting the work shared by the keynote speaker, Dr. Susan Reed (MD, MPH). 

Why menopause issues

Maybe the obvious motive why menopause issues is as a result of half of the world’s inhabitants will expertise it. This ubiquitous expertise brings bothersome signs that may scale back girls’s high quality of life, result in work absences, and scale back total productiveness. Regardless of this, solely a fraction of well being funding goes in the direction of menopause analysis. As an illustration, of the ~9,000 grants funded by the Canadian Institutes of Well being Analysis from 2009-2020, solely 5.9% evaluated feminine particular outcomes, not to mention menopause-focused work. We encourage readers to assessment our three-part menopause sequence the place we cowl many of those matters in depth (Half 1, Half 2, and Half 3). 

Reviewing landmark research in menopause analysis

The Examine of Girls’s Well being Throughout the Nation (SWAN) started in 1994 and was a US-based cohort of three,000 girls aged 42-52. They recognized that “menopause transition signs”, similar to menstrual irregularity and vasomotor signs (i.e., sizzling flushes and evening sweats) peaked between ages 46-56 and that most individuals expertise menopausal signs for as much as 10 years. Additionally they reported that signs had been usually most bothersome within the two years earlier than and after the ultimate menstrual interval. Moreover, the SWAN examine recognized essential predictors of vasomotor signs, similar to adiposity (physique fats), having lower than a school training, stress, despair, and nervousness. The SWAN examine additionally reported key findings round sleep, temper, cognition, heart problems, metabolic well being, bone well being, and sexual well being. As an illustration, they discovered that low libido was related to vasomotor signs and that bone loss is most speedy within the 12 months previous the ultimate menstrual interval.  

One other examine, referred to as MsFLASH, additional superior our understanding of this essential section in girls’s lives, with a give attention to assuaging menopause signs. First, they discovered that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrin reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) have a modest profit of decreasing vasomotor signs in girls who can not or desire to not take hormonal therapies. Sadly, train, omega-3s, and yoga had been not discovered to be helpful therapies. Equally, they discovered that neither vaginal estrogen nor vaginal moisturizer decreased the variety of moderate-to-severe vulvovaginal discomfort episodes in comparison with placebo. 

What will we learn about treating menopause?

From the research cited above and others, Dr. Reed shared the present proof for menopause therapy choices. It is a very temporary overview and we encourage all girls to debate particular therapy approaches with a trusted well being care supplier. First, menopause hormone remedy may be initiated in most girls with signs between ages 50-59 who’re 1) low threat for heart problems, breast most cancers, or venothromboembolism (blood clots) or 2) average threat primarily based on knowledgeable decision-making. Remedies needs to be initiated inside 10 years of the ultimate menstrual interval or earlier than age 60. 

Data translation

Dr. Reed additionally shared a number of helpful patient-centred sources to assist girls navigate the menopause transition. As an illustration, the Menopause Precedence Setting Partnership has a survey the place girls can share their priorities for future menopause analysis initiatives. The MsFLASH examine additionally developed a incredible web site which features a primer on menopause, an summary of therapy choices, and a device to construct a customized “menoplan”. 

Because of the organizers of the Girls’s Well being Analysis Symposium for an additional glorious assembly and for prioritizing mid-life girls’s well being!