Clinical and endocrinological features of statistical clusters of women with climacteric symptoms.

Abstract

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