Age at Menarche, the Leg Length to Sitting Height Ratio, and Risk of Diabetes in Middle-Aged and Elderly Chinese Men and Women

Abstract

AimsTo evaluate the associations of age at menarche and the leg length-to-sitting-height ratio, markers of adolescent growth, with risk of diabetes in later life.Materials and MethodsInformation from 69,385 women and 55,311 men, aged 40–74 years from the Shanghai Women's Health Study and Shanghai Men's Health Study, were included in the current analyses. Diabetes status was ascertained through biennial in person follow-up. Cox models, with age as the time scale, were used.ResultsThere were 2369 cases of diabetes (1831 women; 538 men) during an average of 7.3 and 3.6 years of follow-up of the women and men, respectively. In females, menarche age was inversely associated with diabetes risk after adjustment for birth cohort, education, and income (HR = 0.95, 0.92–0.98). In both genders, leg length-to-sitting-height ratio was inversely related to diabetes (HR = 0.88, 0.80–0.97 for men; HR = 0.91, 0.86–0.96 for women) after adjustment for birth cohort, education, and income. Further adjustment for adult BMI at study enrollment completely eliminated the associations of age at menarche (HR = 0.99, 0.96–1.02) and the leg length-to-sitting-height ratio (HR = 1.00, 0.91–1.10 for men; HR = 1.01, 0.96–1.07 for women) with diabetes risk.ConclusionsOur study suggests that markers of an early age at peak height velocity, i.e. early menarche age and low leg-length-to-sitting height ratio, may be associated with diabetes risk later in life and this association is likely to be mediated through obesity.

Association between age at menarche and diabetes in Korean post-menopausal women: results from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007-2009)

“…In the present study, consistent with previous results [8,9,29], age at menarche was inversely associated with diabetes prevalence even in post-menopausal Korean women. The subjects with age at menarche younger than 13 years old showed high ORs for diabetes.…”

“…Association between age at menarche and diabetes prevalence in women remains controversial. Several studies proved that early menarche was associated with higher prevalence of diabetes [7][8][9]. However, other studies found no association [10,11].…”

Association between Age at Menarche and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in China: A Large Population-Based Investigation

“…Results from previous studies have shown that a female's AAM affects her health later in life and has been identified as a risk factor for several traits including breast cancer [3,4] , osteoporotic fracture [5] , abnormal lung function [6] and depression [7,8] . Moreover, recent researches mentioned that earlier menarche has also been associated with obesity [9] , type 2 diabetes [10][11][12] as well as increased metabolic syndrome [13,14] , and all these confer an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Though several studies have been conducted for Western and Asian women about the relationship between AAM and CVD [15][16][17][18][19][20] , no consensus was achieved and the association of AAM with many cardiovascular (CV) risk factors remains unclear.…”

Factors of Women’s Health From the Perspective of Reproductive Ageing and Risk of Cardiovascular Disorders

“…Аналогичную взаимосвязь выявили и в двух азиатских наблю-дениях [19,20], в то время как в параллельном ис-следовании у китайских женщин эта связь не была определена [21]. Доказано, что при раннем менар-хе (в 8 лет) повышается уровень инсулиноподоб-ного фактора роста-1, андростендиона, дегидро-эпиандростерон-сульфата, лептина и инсулина натощак, снижается уровень глобулина, связыва-ющего половые стероиды [22], возникает высокий риск метаболического синдрома [23,24,25].…”