Association of Hormonal Exposures With Grip Strength in Women >45 Years: Data From the CONSTANCES Cohort Study

Although biological findings show that estrogens are beneficial for muscular mass maintenance and bone resorption inhibition, the association of hormonal exposure with physical performance are controversial.

We investigated the association of reproductive history and exogenous hormone use with hand-grip strength (GS) in women.

Using the data from the CONSTANCES French prospective population-based cohort study, we ran linear mixed models to investigate the association of reproductive history and exogenous hormones use with maximal GS in 37 976 women aged 45 to 69 years recruited between 2012 and 2020. We used multiple imputation by chained equations to control missing values and corrections for multiple testing.

The mean age of women was 57.2 years. Mean GS was 26.6 kg. After adjustment for age and confounders, GS increased with age at menarche (β_{+1 year} = 0.14; 95% CI, 0.10-0.17) and duration of breastfeeding (β _{for ≥10 months vs <5 months} = 0.39; 95% CI, 0.20-0.59; P for linear trend <.01). Compared to nonmenopausal women, postmenopausal women had significantly lower GS (β = -0.78; 95% CI, -0.98 to -0.58). GS was negatively associated with hormone therapy (HT) past use (β = -0.25; 95% CI, -0.42 to -0.07).

Our results suggested that menopausal transition was strongly associated with lower GS. However, despite our hypothesis, increased age at menarche and duration of breastfeeding were associated with higher GS and HT past users presented lower GS than HT never users. These findings could help identify women at high risk of poor physical performance.