Cardiovascular responses of perimenopausal women to hormonal replacement therapy☆,☆☆,★
Section snippets
Study population
The protocol was approved by the institutional review committee, and all subjects gave informed consent at the time of enrollment. Thirty healthy perimenopausal women were recruited by newspaper solicitation. After initial screening, however, only 8 of these subjects met all the inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria included good health, an adequate echocardiographic image, no previous estrogen use, a normal result of mammography within the previous 6 months, ≥3 perimenopausal symptoms
Subject characteristics
On the basis of their occupations all women were classified as coming from middle and upper socioeconomic classes. All women were in good health. The average subject was 52 years old (range, 50-55 years), had a height of 159 ± 5 cm (range, 150-165 cm), and weighed 67 ± 6 kg (range, 53.0-92.6 kg). Body mass index values ranged between 20.5 and 33.7 kg/m2 (mean, 26.4 kg/m2; median, 25.3 kg/m2), and estimates of percentage of body fat from skinfold thicknesses ranged from 21% to 36% (mean, 28%;
Comment
As mentioned earlier, most previous studies demonstrated that hormone replacement therapy has direct structural or functional cardiovascular effects, whereas a recent study that used a randomized, blinded, crossover design did not agree.11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22 The findings of this study support the former point of view and indicate that both the structural changes (end-diastolic volume and peripheral resistance) and the functional changes (stroke volume and cardiac output) begin in the
Acknowledgements
We thank the companies Kranzbuehler and PeroMed (Dr Fischbach) for their technical support. We also thank the chairman of our department, Dr W. Künzel, for his support to implement a cardiovascular laboratory in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Giessen.
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2011, MaturitasCitation Excerpt :In regard to the cardiovascular system, the post-menopausal period is accompanied by an increase in blood pressure (BP) [5]. Estrogen therapy produces controversial results in this aspect, increasing [6,7], decreasing [8,9] or not affecting [10,11] BP. Part of this variability is attributable to women's ages.
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2004, American Journal of Obstetrics and GynecologyImpact of HRT on the arterial carotid vascular tree
2004, Presse MedicaleManaging menopausal symptoms after the women's health initiative
2004, Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health
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Supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology (Nourypharma-Förderungsstipendium 1992 and 1994).
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Reprint requests: Parvis Kamali, MD, Abt. für Gynäkologie und Geburtshilfe, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Klinikstr. 32, D-35392 Giessen, Germany.
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0002-9378/2000 $12.00 + 06/1/102705