Menopause Transition and CVD: A Window of Opportunity

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hello. This is Dr JoAnn Manson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

I'd like to talk with you about a recent report in Circulation, an American Heart Association Scientific Statement on the Menopause Transition and Cardiovascular Disease Risk: Implications for Timing of Early Prevention.

Heart disease is a leading cause of death in women, yet only about half of women are aware of this fact. The menopause transition period, beginning about 2 years before the final menstrual period, is the stage of life during which there is accelerated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and adverse changes in CVD risk factors. The purpose of this report is to highlight a window of opportunity for helping women to reduce their risk factors and lower their CVD risk. I'd like to acknowledge that I'm a coauthor of this report.

Several longitudinal cohort studies have looked at the role of menopause transition and the entire perimenopause (which includes 1 year after the final menstrual period). This is the stage of life when estrogen levels, although fluctuating, are substantially declining and follicle-stimulating hormone levels are increasing.

Researchers have tried to disentangle the changes in risk factors that are due to ovarian aging as opposed to chronological aging in cohorts of women.