Cardiovascular disease is the leading contributor to morbidity and mortality in women. The relative delay in the onset of coronary heart disease CHD in women compared with men has been attributed largely to the putative protective effects of estrogens before menopause. However, epidemiological data have often been misinterpreted and, although CHD incidence is higher in postmenopausal compared with premenopausal women, the relative contribution of ageing and menopause itself remains uncertain. First, CHD incidence increases exponentially with age in women but this dramatic rise is observed in both genders and CHD mortality rates do not accelerate at or after natural menopause 1. Thus, there is no rebound in CHD risk among women around age 50 years as often claimed. Second, there is no convincing cause-effect relationship between natural menopausal status and CHD 2.
Endogenous Sex Hormones, Metabolic Syndrome, and Diabetes in Men and Women
Background: Reproductive and hormonal factors are involved in the etiology of breast cancer, but there are only a few prospective studies on endogenous sex hormone levels and breast cancer risk. We reanalyzed the worldwide data from prospective studies to examine the relationship between the levels of endogenous sex hormones and breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women. Methods: We analyzed the individual data from nine prospective studies on women who developed breast cancer and women who did not. None of the women was taking exogenous sex hormones when their blood was collected to determine hormone levels. The relative risks RRs for breast cancer associated with increasing hormone concentrations were estimated by conditional logistic regression on case—control sets matched within each study. Linear trends and heterogeneity of RRs were assessed by two-sided tests or chi-square tests, as appropriate.
Endogenous sex hormones and risk factors for atherosclerosis in healthy Greek postmenopausal women
To the Editor: In their systematic review and meta-analysis, Dr Ding and colleagues 1 present compelling evidence and arguments for the importance of sex hormones in the development of diabetes and discuss the many studies documenting a relationship between testosterone and diabetes. They describe the paucity of data relating estradiol to diabetes. Estradiol, however, may also have an important relationship with diabetes.
Metrics details. Although global hypomethylation of leukocyte DNA has been associated with an increased risk of several sites of cancer, including breast cancer, determinants of global methylation level among healthy individuals remain largely unexplored. Here, we examined whether postmenopausal endogenous sex hormones were associated with the global methylation level of leukocyte DNA.