No added value of age at menopause and the lifetime cumulative number of menstrual cycles for cardiovascular risk prediction in postmenopausal women

Background The aim of the present study was to investigate the added value of age at menopause and the lifetime cumulative number of menstrual cycles in cardiovascular risk prediction in postmenopausal women. Methods This study included 971 women. The ankle–arm index was used as a proxy for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The ankle–arm index was calculated for each leg by dividing the highest ankle systolic blood pressure by the highest brachial systolic blood pressure. A cut-off value of 0.95 was used to differentiate between low and high risk women. Three cardiovascular risk models were constructed. In the initial model all classical predictors for cardiovascular disease were investigated. This model was then extended by age at menopause or the lifetime cumulative number of menstrual cycles to test their added value for cardiovascular risk prediction. Differences in discriminative power between the models were investigated by comparing the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results The mean age was 66.0 (± 5.6) years. The 6 independent predictors for cardiovascular disease were age, systolic blood pressure, total to HDL cholesterol ratio, current smoking, glucose level, and body mass index ≥ 30 kg/m2. The ROC area was 0.69 (0.64–0.73) and did not change when age at menopause or the lifetime cumulative number of menstrual cycles was added. Conclusions The findings in this study among postmenopausal women did not support the view that age at menopause or a refined estimation of lifetime endogenous estrogen exposure would improve cardiovascular risk prediction as approximated by the ankle–arm index.