Early menopause increases heart risks

Early menopause, before age 40, may increase the risk for cardiovascular disease.

Using a British health database, researchers studied records of 144,260 postmenopausal women, average age around 60. Among them, 4,904, or 3.4 per cent, had reached menopause before 40 naturally; 644 had gone into early menopause because they had oophorectomies, or surgical removal of the ovaries. The study is in JAMA.

During an average follow-up of seven years, 6 per cent of women who reached menopause naturally before 40 developed cardiovascular disease, as did 7.6 per cent of women who had oophorectomies before 40. But during the study period, only 3.9