Age at Menopause Not Linked to Death from Stroke

July 8, 2004

Women who experience menopause at an early age seem to be prone to coronary heart disease, several recent studies have shown. However, a woman's age at menopause does not appear to be related to death from stroke, new research suggests.
As such, women who go through menopause in their early 40s are no more or less likely to die from stroke than women who don't experience this life transition until their 50s.

As reported in the medical journal Stroke, Dr. Bjarne J. Jacobsen, of the University of Tromso, Norway, and colleagues studied a group of 19,731 Norwegian women. There was a low rate of smoking in this population, and few women used hormone replacement therapy.

Over 37 years of follow-up, 3561 women died of stroke. There was no significant relationship between age at menopause and death from stroke. This held true for the two main types of stroke -- those that arise from blood vessel blockage and those that occur when a blood vessel ruptures.

"In summary, we find that age at...menopause is not related to stroke mortality," Jacobsen and colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: Stroke, July 2004.