Sexuality, age and health risks: the mechanisms of menopause explored in two studies

They have nothing to do with each other but come to shed light on a sudden on a hormonal and physiological change still largely steeped in mystery. Researchers are looking at menopause in two separate studies published in recent days.

The first, published Wednesday in the magazine Royal Society Open Science, establishes that women who have frequent sexual intercourse near the menopause reach this stop of ovarian function less quickly than those who are not as sexually active at the same age. This work was carried out on data collected in the United States from 3000 women, aged on average 46 years at the start of the observations, and 45% of whom then experienced natural menopause, at 52 years on average, during the following decade. They precisely conclude that women who have intimate relationships at least once a week would reduce their chances of entering menopause at a given age by 28% compared those who have sex less than once a month. According to its authors, this could be explained by a response of the body to the pressures of evolution.

“If a woman has few or infrequent sexual relationships nearing her forties, her body will not receive the physical signals of a possible pregnancy,” write Megan Arnot and Ruth Mace, scientists at the University. College London, in their conclusions. “From a perspective of maximizing physical fitness”, the woman’s body could then invest more of her energy in taking care of her family rather than in ovulation.

Another study, other conclusions, on premature menopause this time. If we already know that this phenomenon, which occurs at the age of 40 or less, is linked to a number of medical problems that arise later in life, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, there are today little is known about the link between natural menopause and the development of multiple medical conditions – known as multimorbidity. However, in work published on Monday, Australian researchers ensure that women who have an early menopause, at the age of 40 or less therefore, are three times more likely to develop chronic and multiple medical problems in their sixties than those who are 50 or 51 years old.

The study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, involved more than 5,000 Australian women, aged 45 to 50 in 1996 and followed until 2016. During these twenty years, 2.3% of women had premature menopause and 55% developed multimorbidity. Compared with menopausal women at 50-51 years, those who were prematurely were twice as likely to have a combination of pathologies at the age of 60 years and three times more from 60 years. And this even after taking into account other factors that may affect the results (having or not having children, the number of children, education, overweight, smoking, physical activity …) . Results which therefore do not show that premature menopause is the cause of multimorbidity, but that it is strongly associated with it.