Factor analysis and cluster analysis were applied to a set of 17 climacteric symptoms data obtained from 194 premenopausal and postmenopausal women. Six distinct factors were extracted and the women were divided into 7 groups by hierarchical cluster analysis in terms of their factor scores. Only one representative factor was identified in 3 groups out of the 7. These 3 groups including 87 women were tentatively designated as vasomotor symptom, neurotic, and sensory disturbance groups. These results confirmed statistically that at least 3 simple etiological factors exist among climacteric symptoms.climacteric symptoms ; factor analysis ; cluster analysisAt the First International Congress on the Menopause held at La Grande Motte, France in 1976, etiology of climacteric symptoms was defined as follows : 1) hypothalamic-autonomic imbalance, 2) true estrogen deficiency, 3) psychological factors, and 4) socio-cultural factors (titian and Serr 1976). Climacteric symptoms are, thus, so various as to require different therapies, based on the factors involved in their etiologies. However, only fragmental approaches such as those from the viewpoint of endocrinologic (Chakravarti et al. 1979), psycho somatic (Polit and Larocco 1980), socio-cultural, and other aspects have been undertaken in order to elucidate the etiology of the symptoms. Such complexity may be a reason why the etiology of climacteric symptoms, as a whole, still remains obscure. Therefore, we have carried out a series of studies with the aim of developing a comprehensive approach to the etiology of such symptoms ; factor analysis and cluster analysis were applied to a set of symptoms data and the
Clinical and endocrinological features of women with climacteric symptoms, who were clustered by means of factor analysis and cluster analysis, were evaluated as to serum concentrations of estradiol, progesterone, follicle-stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone, and also as to mean ages as well as a rate of premenopausal women or that of postmenopausal women against all women in each one of the clusters. Comparison of these parameters among these clusters indicated, with statistical significance, that vasomotor symptoms, neurotic symptoms, and depressive state of the climacteric women are endocrinologically characterized by a depressed level of serum estrogen, relatively high level of serum estrogen, and an elevation of serum gonadotropin, particularly of luteinizing hormone, respectively. climacteric symptoms ; estrogen ; gonadotropin ; follicle-stimulating hormone ; luteinizing hormoneThe etiology of climacteric symptoms is still considered to lie in complicated chaos, although many studies have been carried out separately focusing on various aspects such as endocrinological factors, psychosomatic factors, etc. In order to develop a comprehensive approach to the etiology of climacteric symptoms, the authors have undertaken a series of studies of these symptoms ; in our previous report (Abe et al. 1984), statistical factor analysis and cluster analysis were applied to data consisting of sets of 17 symptoms of climacteric women. Six distinct factors were extracted and the women were divided into 7 groups by hierarchical cluster analysis in terms of their factor scores. In the present study, the authors investigated clinical and endocrinological features of these clustered groups of women with climacteric symptoms in order to elucidate etiologies of the
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