Daily Dose: Menstrual Disorders Raise Risk for Future CVD in Young Women

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Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

On November 15, 2023, we reported on findings from 2 studies presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2023, November 10-13, 2023, in Philadelphia, PA.

The studies

Study #1. The first study examined the prevalence of blood pressure (BP) in hypertension range (BP-HTN) in adolescent women with and without polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and assessed any association between BP-HTN and PCOS. Researchers analyzed data from an existing cohort of 171 855 young women (aged 13 to 17 years) from Kaiser Permanente Northern California with a well-child visit between 2012 to 2018. Investigators compared differences in BP according to PCOS (n-1142) and no PCOS (n=167 651) and used multivariable logistic regression to assess the association of PCOS and HTN-BP.

Study #2. Investigators examined the risk of ischemic heart disease (IHD) in women with dysmenorrhea. They tapped the Mount Sinai data warehouse to create a cohort of 30 554 women with dysmenorrhea and 25 350 controls. After full propensity score matching on demographic and clinical covariates, they used weighted logistic regression with IHD before age 50 years as a binary outcome. The team used separate regression models to investigate IHD subtypes (angina, acute myocardial infarction [AMI], AMI complications, chronic IHD).

The findings

Study #1. The prevalence of HTN-BP was much higher for participants diagnosed with PCOS vs those without PCOS (18.6% vs 6.9%, P<.001), according to the study abstract. After multivariable adjustment for age, race/ethnicity, and BMI level, having PCOS was associated with 1.3-fold greater odds of HTN-BP (aOR 1.3, CI 1.1-1.5) than not having the disorder. The odds were similarly greater for young women with obesity (aOR 1.3, CI 1.1-1.6).

Study #2. Dysmenorrhea was associated with a significant increase in the odds ratio (OR) for overall IHD (OR 2.08; 95% CI 1.5-2.8; P<.001), as well as for angina (OR 1.90, 95% CI 0.9-3.9; P<.08) and chronic IHD (OR 2.07, 95% CI 1.3-3.2; P<.001).

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