Perimenopausal disorders: Age-related, psychological, and social predictors of their emergence

Abstract

Perimenopausal disorders are among the serious problems affecting the medico biological, psychoso cial, and socio cultural spheres in the lives of the women who entered the climacteric period (peri menopause or climacterium) [9]. Today's women spend a third of their lives in the period of perimeno pause, and, therefore, the quality of life for the women in this age category is now under more careful exami nation [12]. First of all, this is relevant to the diagnos tics, prophylaxis, and correction of the disorders man ifested by psychoemotional and neurovegetative symptoms making up the climacteric syndrome (CS). Clinico epidemiological studies on the frequency rate for CS and premenopausal dysfunctional uterine bleedings give evidence for its present growth to 50-65% [1, 3, 4, 10]. The CS associated pathological manifestations disturb women's professional life, decrease their social activity, and bring changes to their interpersonal relationships [7,11].Despite a long history of studies on the CS patho genesis and its clinical manifestations, the qualifica tion of perimenopausal disorders still contains a lot of disputable and unsolved questions [8, 10, 13]. As before, the assessment of many significant factors that can affect the development of perimenopausal disor ders is not included. It relates, in the first place, to typological and personal specific characteristics, including type of nervous system, and effects of psy chological and social factors. In other words, a biopsy chosocial approach has not been applied so far to the problem of perimenopausal disorders. MATERIALS AND METHODSThe analytical material taken for our study was based on the results of investigations done in over 500 perimenopausal female subjects. Clinical, psy chological, and social indicators were studied within a biopsychosocial approach. The basic group was com posed of 416 investigated subjects aged from 42 to 55 years with perimenopausal disorders (residents of St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast). The control group included 138 women from the same region with a norm corresponding course of their perimenopausal period. The two participant groups were comparable by their obstetrical-gynecological anamneses, diag nosed extragenital pathologies, and other epidemio logical characteristics.The following research methods were used: anam nestic; clinical, including observation, the modified menopausal index test (MMI) [16], and the vegetative nervous system status assessment [6]; experimental psychology, including the four dimensional symp tomatic neuroticism scale questionnaire by Alexand rowicz for the diagnostics of neurosis like disorders and impaired psychic adaptation, tests for assessing fears and personal anxiety by the Ch.D. SpielbergerYu.L. Hanin anxiety scale, tests for assessing the emo Abstract-Perimenopausal disorders belong to serious problems involving the medico biological, psychoso cial, and socio cultural aspects of the lives of the women who entered the perimenopausal period (climacte rium). A contingent of perimenopaus...

Prevalence of Psychosomatic and Genitourinary Syndrome Among Menopausal Women: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Different countries were included in this review. Four studies were conducted in Spain ( 15 , 16 , 18 , 19 ), two each in Ecuador ( 13 , 20 ), Turkey ( 21 , 22 ), Korea ( 23 , 24 ), and China ( 25 , 26 ), and one each in India ( 27 ), Bangladesh ( 28 ), Saudi Arabia ( 29 ), the United States ( 30 ), Oman ( 31 ), Africa ( 32 ), Finland ( 17 ), Israel ( 33 ), Japan ( 34 ), Russia ( 35 ), Chile ( 36 ), Brazil ( 37 ), Poland ( 38 ), Italy ( 39 ), Nepal ( 40 ), Singapore ( 14 ), and Jordan ( 12 ). The smallest sample size was 187 ( 27 ) and the largest 2,886 ( 34 ).…”

“…In this meta-analysis, the pooled prevalence of premenopausal, perimenopausal, and post-menopausal women was 35.5, 24.18, and 45.49%, respectively. The wide range of prevalence for each of the three menopausal stages was due to the different study settings, where 21 ( 12 , 13 , 15 , 16 , 18 – 24 , 27 , 29 – 31 , 36 – 40 ) studies were conducted in medical centers, and eight ( 14 , 17 , 25 , 28 , 32 – 35 ) were in the community. Methodological techniques such as sampling methods and tools, together with study implementation may also account for differences in estimated prevalence among studies.…”