Limitations
The main limitation of the MR study was the potential for inadequate power for assessing some outcomes despite the large overall size of the study cohort. Lack of adequate power may be responsible for some of the nonsignificant associations seen in the study, such as for breast and endometrial cancers, where substantial prior evidence has implicated increased risk through the effects of prolonged exposure to endogenous or exogenous estrogens.
The healthy cohort effect in the UKB is a known weakness of this dataset that may have limited the number of cases and generalizability of findings.
Osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s disease were self-reported.
The study only included participants of European ancestry because most subjects in most of the cohorts examined were White women and the applied MR instruments were found by genome-wide association studies run predominantly in White women. The authors said the causal effects of ANM need study in more diverse populations.
Disclosures
- The study received no commercial funding.
- None of the authors had disclosures.
This is a summary of a preprint research study, “Genetic evidence for causal relationships between age at natural menopause and the risk of aging-associated adverse health outcomes,” written by authors primarily based at Stanford University School of Medicine i
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.