Do Women??s Premenstrual Symptoms and Their Mother??s Climacteric History Predispose to Their Own Vasomotor Symptoms?

The purpose of this study was to assess whether women with vasomotor symptoms more often have had premenstrual symptoms than women without vasomotor complaints. Furthermore, the aim was to assess whether there was a correlation between the prevalence of women's vasomotor symptoms and their mothers symptoms. A postal questionnaire was sent to all 1,324 women aged 55 and 56 years in the community of Linköping, Sweden. Furthermore, a semistructured interview was undertaken with 33 postmenopausal women: 16 women with pronounced vasomotor symptoms and a control group of 17 women who had never had vasomotor symptoms. Questions were asked about previous premenstrual symptoms and current as well as previous vasomotor complaints. The women were also asked about their mothers' vasomotor complaints. The questionnaire was returned from 84.7% of the women. There was a significant positive association between vasomotor symptoms and previous premenstrual symptoms. Previous moderate to severe premenstrual symptoms were reported by 49% of the women who had moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms and only by 24% of the women who had experienced no or only slight vasomotor symptoms (X2 = 69.6; p << 0.001). Women who had vasomotor symptoms reported that their mothers had suffered from vasomotor complaints significantly more often than women without symptoms. This was the case in both the questionnaire study and in the interview. We propose that a contributing factor to the association between premenstrual symptoms and postmenopausal vasomotor symptoms may be that women with these symptoms are more sensitive to, or have more pronounced, neurotransmittor changes in the hypothalamus. Furthermore, we found a positive association between the prevalence of vasomotor symptoms in women and their mothers. This may also support the hypothesis that some women are more sensitive to hypothalamic changes, although many other reasons, like recall bias, are possible.