Item #4
Diabetes
Linked to Menstrual Problems
Women
younger than 30 with type 1 diabetes may be more likely than others to
have problems with menstruation, including longer and heavier periods.
Compared
with their nondiabetic sisters and unrelated women, women with type 1
diabetes reported that they also tended to begin menstruating at a
later age and went through menopause relatively early, according to a
report in the April issue of Diabetes Care.
In
addition, women with type 1 diabetes tended to become pregnant less
often and have more stillbirths than women without the condition, Dr.
Elsa S. Strotmeyer of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and
colleagues report.
They
noted that the study findings may not necessarily apply to women with
type 1 diabetes who are now younger than 30. That's because the
findings are based on information from women who were largely in their
40s, and reflected menstrual and reproductive health from years ago,
Dr. Strotmeyer explained.
She
said that some of the participants' reported menstruation problems may
have stemmed from poor control of their insulin and glucose levels--a
problem that may have been more common in years past, when the study
participants were in their 20s.
"We
don't know how differences in treatment over the past 20 years or so
may affect how younger women may experience" menstruation
problems in diabetes, stated Dr. Strotmeyer.
The
researcher added that she believed doctors are often aware that women
with type 1 diabetes may have problems with pregnancy, but menstrual
problems can be overlooked. She
thinks that there's more focus on good pregnancy outcomes than there
would be on having less menstrual irregularities.
"And
I think we sort of do a disservice to quality of life for the type 1
diabetic women when we take that perspective," she added.
For
the study, Dr. Strotmeyer and her colleagues reviewed questionnaire
responses on menstrual and reproductive health from 143 women with
type 1 diabetes, 186 of their sisters who did not have diabetes, and
158 unrelated women also free of diabetes.
Family
history can influence whether a woman has menstrual problems, and
including diabetes-free sisters in the study takes that into account,
according to the researchers.
Among
the problems more frequently cited by women with type 1 diabetes when
they were in their 20's were heavy bleeding, periods lasting at least
6 days, and going more than 31 days between periods.
However,
once women turned 30, the rate of menstrual problems among nondiabetic
women roughly matched that of diabetic women.
Menstrual
irregularities become more common as women age, Dr. Strotmeyer said,
and these findings suggest that nondiabetics began to experience as
many problems as diabetic women--not that menstrual irregularities
resolved in diabetic women.
Diabetes
Care 2003;26:1016-1021.
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DID
YOU KNOW:
The
CDC
recently estimated that 15 percent of all U.S. children and teen-agers
weigh too much.
Still, the ones with diabetes tend to be especially big, tall
for their age and large all over. Twelve-year-olds weigh 250 pounds.
Invariably their parents are heavy.
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