Wake Forest Center. US: Frequent menopausal vasomotor
symptoms (VMS), including hot flashes and night sweats, lasted for more than
seven years during the transition to menopause for more than half of the women
in a large study and African American women reported the longest total VMS
duration, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
VMS are the hallmark of the
menopausal transition and they can affect the quality of women’s lives. Up to
80 percent of women experience VMS during the transition to menopause and,
despite the pervasiveness of these symptoms, robust estimates about how long
VMS last are lacking.
Nancy E. Avis, Ph.D., of Wake
Forest Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, N.C., and coauthors analyzed data
from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN), a
multiracial/multiethnic study of women transitioning to menopause that was
conducted from February 1996 through April 2013. The analyses included 1,449
women with frequent VMS, which was defined as occurring at least six days in
the previous two weeks.
To read the entire news release issued by JAMA Internal Medicine, click here.