American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on March 21, 2008
American Journal of Epidemiology 2008 167(11):1287-1294; doi:10.1093/aje/kwn046
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ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS |
Predictors of the Timing of Natural Menopause in the Multiethnic Cohort Study
1 Department of Cancer Etiology, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA
2 Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
3 Cancer Research Center of Hawaii, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI
Correspondence to Dr. Katherine DeLellis Henderson, Division of Population Sciences, Department of Cancer Etiology, City of Hope National Medical Center, 1500 East Duarte Road, Duarte, CA 91010 (e-mail: khenderson{at}coh.org).
Received for publication August 3, 2007. Accepted for publication February 11, 2008.
The timing of natural menopause has implications for several health endpoints; in particular, it is a risk factor for breast cancer. The authors investigated factors influencing the timing of natural menopause among 95,704 women with a mean age of 59.7 years (10th–90th percentile range, 47.0–71.0) in five racial/ethnic groups in the Multiethnic Cohort Study, including non-Latina Whites, Japanese Americans, African Americans, Native Hawai'ians, and Latinas. The authors investigated whether race/ethnicity and several lifestyle and reproductive characteristics were associated with the timing of natural menopause. Race/ethnicity was a significant independent predictor of the timing of natural menopause. Other factors, including smoking, age at menarche, parity, and body mass index, did not significantly alter the race/ethnicity-specific hazard ratios. Relative to non-Latina Whites, natural menopause occurred earlier among Latinas (US-born Latinas: hazard ratio (HR) = 1.10, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.07, 1.14; non-US-born Latinas: HR = 1.25, 95% CI: 1.21, 1.30) and later among Japanese Americans (HR = 0.93, 95% CI: 0.90, 0.95). These results support the hypothesis that the timing of natural menopause is driven by a combination of genetic, reproductive, and lifestyle factors.
cohort studies; continental population groups; epidemiologic factors; menopause
Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; HR, hazard ratio
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