It's no secret that women begin to lose bone mass and density as they exit their childbearing years, but other changes in body composition associated with menopause may trigger additional health problems, says University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign kinesiology professor Ellen Evans. "The risk of osteoporosis in the postmenopausal woman is well characterized," said Evans, whose research focuses on body composition and disease prevention in the elderly. "But just as problematic, if not more so, she said, are health risks -- such as diabetes and heart disease -- associated with obesity in menopausal women. And since the nation's population of postmenopausal women is expected to double by 2025, Evans said, the implications are profound.
"Seventy percent of women age 45-54 are overweight or obese," said the Illinois researcher. "Before age 50, the majority of women tend to slowly increase their weight, whereas after menopause there appears to be an accelerated increase in fat mass and a change in preferential fat storage to a central -- that is, abdominal -- location."
Those facts have caused Evans and other researchers to ponder the obvious question: "Is it age, or menopause?"
"Only recently emerging in the scientific literature is the finding that menopausal transition produces a detrimental change in body composition both in terms of overall body fatness and body-fat distribution," Evans said. "If decreases in sex steroid concentrations influence body composition, the metabolic impact may explain why a woman's risk for diabetes and heart disease increases after menopause."
Evans, who joined the Illinois faculty last year after completing postdoctoral studies at Washington University School of Medicine's Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology, is co-author of a study titled "Contributions of Total and Regional Fat Mass to Risk for Cardiovascular Disease in Older Women," published recently in the American Journal of Physiology -- Endocrinology and Metabolism. The other co-authors are A.A. Ehsani and K.B. Schechtman, Washington University School of Medicine, and R.E. Van Pelt and W.M. Kohrt, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver.
In the study, Evans and her colleagues found that postmenopausal women with higher levels of trunk fat may be at an increased risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease, whereas leg fat appears to confer protective effects against metabolic dysfunction.
Evans' current research interest centers on postmenopausal women and the potential utility of exercise as an alternative to traditional hormone replacement therapy for disease prevention.
