Reproductive factors and cardiovascular health in post-menopausal women: a special focus on natural menopause

Female-specific reproductive factors might contribute to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and the American Heart Association (AHA) recently proposed Life's Essential 8 (LE8) score to quantify cardiovascular health (CVH). The study aimed to examine the relationships between reproductive factors and the LE8 score among post-menopause women in the United States. We enrolled 3223 post-menopause women from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). CVH groups based on LE8 score were low (0–49), moderate (50–79), and high good CVH levels (80–100). Multivariate ordinal logistic regressions were applied to estimate the associations between reproductive factors and the LE8 score. In multivariate model, early menarche (OR: 0.69, 95 percent CI: 0.51–0.93) and early menopause (OR: 0.57, 95 percent CI: 0.43–0.77) were associated with LE8 score compared with normal menarche and menopause; Meanwhile, ages at menarche and menopause were positively correlated with LE8 score. The number of pregnancies and full-term pregnancies were negatively associated with LE8 (OR for per pregnancy increase and 95 percent CI, 0.93 (0.88, 0.98), 0.93 (0.87, 0.99), separately). Overall, natural menopausal women with early age at menarche and menopause, and a higher number of pregnancies may have a high risk of lower CVH, and need to focus on their CVH.