Menopausal symptoms in Australian women

To describe Australian-born women's experience of symptoms during the natural menopause transition and the relative contribution of menopausal and health status, social factors and lifestyle behaviours.

A community based cross-sectional survey by telephone interview was carried out on a randomly derived sample of Melbourne women.

The participants were 2000 Australian-born women, aged between 45 and 55 years.

A list of 22 symptoms was used. Explanatory variables were: sociodemographic variables; menopausal and health status; lifestyle behaviours; attitudes to ageing and to menopause.

A 70% response rate was achieved for eligible women who could be contacted during the study. Premenopausal women were the least symptomatic and perimenopausal women the most symptomatic. Factor analysis found seven common factors from the 22 symptoms studied. Menopausal status based on menstrual history was significantly related to two groups of symptoms: vasomotor symptoms, which increased through the menopausal transition; and general somatic symptoms which were more frequent in the perimenopause. Analysis of variance of factor scores found fewer symptoms with increasing years of education, better self-rated health, the use of fewer non-prescription medications, the absence of chronic health conditions, a low level of interpersonal stress, the absence of premenstrual complaints, not currently smoking, exercise at least once a week, and positive attitudes to ageing and menopause.

Many factors unrelated to hormonal changes contributed to the symptoms. Longitudinal investigation is needed to determine the relative importance of hormonal, psychosocial and lifestyle variables in the aetiology of mid-life symptoms.