Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The body fat distribution chances with menopause in women. The gluteo-femoral fat dominancy alters with central adiposity via menopause. The incidence of cardiovascular atherosclerosis increases with this period. Altered lipid profile and the increment in abdominal adipose tissue are suggested to be the influencing factors of this situation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the metabolic and anthropometric features of premenopausal and postmenopausal obese women and the influencing factors of dyslipidemia.

Methods: Obese 382 and overweight 1960 women, between 40–65 years old, were included into the study. The patients with surgical menopause and under the treatment of hormone replacement therapy were excluded. Group I (n=1080) was consisted of premenopausal and Group II (n=1262) was consisted of postmenopausal women.

Results: The women were significantly older in Group 2 (52.70±5.70 vs 44.87±4.28 yrs. Triglyceride, cholesterol, HDL-C, LDL-C, VLDL-C and cholesterol /HDL were significantly higher in Group 2 (P<0.05). HOMA-IR, HOMA-B and QUICKI were significantly different in Group 2 as well (P=0.03, P=0.01, P=0.02 respectively). Despite there was no difference for weight, BMI and body fat mass-regards of whole body adiposity- between the groups, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, sagital waist height and calculated abdominal fat mass-regards of intraabdominal adiposity- were higher in Group II (P<0.05).

Conclusion: In this study, women in postmenopausal period were found to have higher lipid parameters and significant abdominal adiposity. Although the advanced age and hypoeostrogenemia simplify dyslipidemia, the effect of abdominal adiposity has to be taken into consideration. In postmenopausal period body fat distribution alters from gluteofemoral region to intraabdominal region where the tissue is more sensitive to lypolysis. The increased insulin resistance parameters with accelerated dyslipidemia can be the suggested as a result of this alteration as well.