Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Many studies have shown that the transition to menopause or peri menopause that begins with onset of menstrual irregularities and ends with the last menstrual period, was often associated with changes in body composition and specifically central distribution of adipose tissue.

The objective is this study is to determine the prevalence of global and android obesity in postmenopausal women compared to premenopausal women in the general population.

Methodology: Descriptive and analytical cross-sectional study conducted among 1583 women aged between 18 and 64 years living in households Algiers drawn at random by the National Statistics Office. 39.9% of postmenopausal women are obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m²) while only 26.1% of premenopausal women are obese. %) (P <0.0001). In multivariate analysis menopause does not appear to be a risk factor for global obesity OR 0.79 (95% CI 0.58 to 1.09) P=0.159, whereas it is a risk factor of abdominal obesity OR =1.73 (1.11 to 2.71) P=0.016.

Our results are supported by many studies that showed an acceleration in abdominal fat accumulation measured by DEXA and computed tomography.

Conclusion: All these studies suggest that the increased incidence of cardiovascular disease in postmenopausal women could be attributed to the increase in visceral fat.