A later menopausal age is associated with a lower prevalence of physical frailty in community-dwelling older adults: The Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study (KFACS)

Y Lee; S Kim; M Kim; B S Kim; E Jeong; H Shim; C W Won

doi:10.1016/j.archger.2020.104243

A later menopausal age is associated with a lower prevalence of physical frailty in community-dwelling older adults: The Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study (KFACS)

Arch Gerontol Geriatr. 2020 Nov/Dec:91:104243. doi: 10.1016/j.archger.2020.104243. Epub 2020 Aug 26.

Authors

Y Lee¹, S Kim¹, M Kim², B S Kim¹, E Jeong¹, H Shim¹, C W Won³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Family Medicine, Kyung Hee University Medical Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
² Department of Biomedical Science and Technology, College of Medicine, East-West Medical Research Institute, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
³ Elderly Frailty Research Center, Department of Family Medicine, College of Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: chunwon62@naver.com.

PMID: 32916429
DOI: 10.1016/j.archger.2020.104243

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine whether age at menopause is associated with physical frailty.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study that included 1264 women (70-84 years) from the Korean and Aging Cohort Study (KFACS) who had records of their ages at menarche and their ages at menopause and had experienced a natural menopause. We used Fried criteria to assess physical frailty status. The ages at menopause and menarche were collected using self-reported questionnaires.

Results: The prevalence of physical frailty decreased by 5.3 % with each year of increase in age at menopause after adjusting for age, marital status, years of education, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, polypharmacy, hospitalizations, falls, and hormone replacement therapy (p = 0.005). The prevalence of frailty significantly decreased by 4.1 % when the reproductive span increased by a year (p = 0.019).

Conclusions: This study found that a later menopausal age was associated with a lower risk of frailty using Fried criteria. In addition, it showed that a longer reproductive span was associated with a lower prevalence of frailty.

Keywords: Elderly; Frailty; Korean; Menopause.