Effects of tibolone on body composition in postmenopausal women: a 1-year follow up study

We investigated the effects of 1-year tibolone treatment on body weight, body composition and indices of android obesity in postmenopausal women.

Forty-four postmenopausal women participated in this open-label controlled study; mean age was 51.8+/-2.21 years and all women were menopausal for 3.8+/-1.40 years. Twenty-two of them started taking 2.5 mg tibolone (TIB) daily for 1 year, whereas the remaining 22 served as age-matched controls. All subjects underwent a structured interview, physical examination, body composition measurements performed by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) - Hologic QDR 4500 A, as well as bioelectrical body impedance analysis (BI) - Tanita TBF-215, Japan.

The TIB group did not significantly increase their weight (+0.4 kg), while the non-treated controls increased their mean weight by 1.4 kg (p=0.046). In the TIB group, DXA showed a non-significant body fat decrease by a mean of 0.5 kg and a non-significant lean mass increase by 0.8 kg, while in the control group, fat mass increased by 1.7 kg (p=0.032) and lean mass did not change. BI revealed that the TIB group had lost some fat ( approximately 0.6 kg, n.s.) and put some free-fat mass ( approximately 1.0 kg, p=0.048) without changes in total body water. The control group put on some fat ( approximately 1.1 kg, p=0.042) and lost some body water ( approximately 0.4 kg, n.s.).

Results from both methods of measuring body composition show a similar trend: a decrease in fat mass and an increase in lean mass in TIB treated subjects. From the body composition perspective, tibolone may be regarded as a preferential alternative to conventional hormonal therapy (HT) in postmenopausal women.