Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2021 Jan 27;16(1):e0245444. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245444. eCollection 2021.
Many women going through the menopausal transition experience vasomotor symptoms (VMS), and research has shown that there is a large amount of variation in their frequency and severity. Many lifestyle factors have been found to co-vary with VMS, including the level of social support received by the woman, and how stressed she is. Stress is well documented to worsen menopause symptoms, and there is some evidence that support eases them; however, there is little research into whether support is an effective buffer against the negative effects of stress on VMS. Using nine years of data from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (n = 2718), we use multilevel Poisson regression with random effects to test: 1) if more social support is associated with decreased VMS frequency, 2) if increased life stress worsens VMS, and 3) if support acts as a buffer against stress. After adjusting for age, marital status, smoking, self-perceived overall health, ethnicity, and menopausal status, we find that stress increases the frequency of VMS. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find strong evidence that emotional support led to lower VMS frequency, or that support buffers against the effects of stress. Experience of a stressful event, but not amount of social support, was included in the best fitting model; with the degree to which the woman was upset by the life stressor having the largest effect on menopause symptoms. Here, women who said they were currently upset by a stressful event experienced 21% more VMS than women who had experienced no life stressor. This research highlights that social factors may impact the menopausal transition.
许多处于绝经期过渡阶段的女性都会经历血管舒缩症状（VMS），研究表明，其发生频率和严重程度存在很大差异。许多生活方式因素与 VMS 相关，包括女性获得的社会支持程度和她的压力水平。压力会明显加重更年期症状，有证据表明支持可以缓解这些症状；但是，关于支持是否可以缓解压力对 VMS 的负面影响，研究甚少。我们使用全国妇女健康研究（n = 2718）九年的数据，采用具有随机效应的多级泊松回归来检验：1）更多的社会支持是否与 VMS 频率降低相关；2）生活压力增加是否会加重 VMS；3）支持是否可以缓冲压力的影响。在调整年龄、婚姻状况、吸烟、自我感知总体健康状况、种族和绝经状态后，我们发现压力会增加 VMS 的频率。与我们的假设相反，我们没有强有力的证据表明情感支持会导致 VMS 频率降低，或者支持可以缓冲压力的影响。压力事件的经历，而不是社会支持的数量，被包含在最佳拟合模型中；女性对生活压力源的烦恼程度对更年期症状的影响最大。在这里，目前对压力事件感到烦恼的女性比没有经历生活压力源的女性经历的 VMS 多 21%。这项研究强调了社会因素可能会影响绝经期过渡。
