Early menopause for diabetic women.

Women with type 1 diabetes face not only lumpy breasts but also another little-known condition-premature menopause.

Using histories of 122 women with type 1 diabetes and 147 of their sisters who were not diabetic, Janice Dorman of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health focused on the 30 who had already gone through menopause, the phase during which menstruation stops. The researchers found that the diabetics were, on average, 9 years and 2 months younger than the nondiabetic women when menopause occurred.

"This was a very surprising finding," Dorman says, adding that their results must be tested. She suggests that premature menopause may be a manifestation of the accelerated aging process that affects people with diabetes.

Researchers know that postmenopausal women suffer an elevated risk of heart disease, but for diabetic women, who already have a high risk of cardiac trouble, the threat to the heart could be even greater. "It's a double hit," Dorman says.

Women with diabetes should seriously consider hormone replacement therapy after menopause to reduce their risk of heart disease, Dorman says. Such therapy replaces the hormone estrogen (SN: 6/21/97, p. 383), which drops dramatically after menopause and is thought to protect younger women from cardiovascular disease. Dorman presented her team's work at the American Diabetes Association's 57th Annual Scientific Sessions in Boston.