Menopause Is the Most Striking Event in a Woman's Life

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Introduction:

Menopause is one of the most striking events occurring during women’s life which holds intrinsic clinical and public health interest due to its related complications. It considered as an important marker of aging and health in women (1,2).
Increasing life expectance result in an increase in postmenopausal women population worldwide .It is estimated that mentioned population is expected to increase to 1200 million by 2030.From this population 76% will be from developing countries(3).
Postmenopausal women are at risk of many chronic disorders including cardiovascular disease (CVD), osteoporosis and consequently higher rate of morbidity and mortality (4).
Osteoporosis is a common asympstomatic postmenopausal disease that has a substantial impact on the quality of life of older women and is defined as bone mineral density (BMD) 2.5 standard deviations below the young healthy adult mean (T-score ≤-2.5).According to World Health Organization (WHO) report 30% of all postmenopausal women suffered from osteoporosis(5).
Osteoporosis related fractures are one of the causes of disability among elderly population (6).
In addition,the association between decreased bone mineral density (BMD) or osteoporosis with CVD and subclinical vascular disease has been documented in many studies(7-9).
The calcium transport hypothesis could explain the pathogenesis of mentioned association .Accordingly, calcium loss from bone leads to calcium deposition into the arterial wall,arterial wall calcification and consequently arterial stiffness which result in CVD(10).
Deposition of calcium within the media of breast tissue arteries is defined as Breast arterial calcification (BAC)(11).
Several studies have indicated that women with BAC have incr...

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...lence and higher degree of BAC are increased with age and only 1% of women aged<60 years had graded 2-3 BAC(32).
It is recommended to plan future studies among post menopausal women aged >60-65 years. In presence of probable association between BAC and BMD, the presence of osteoporosis would be predicted by routine mammography without using DXA which considered a high cost procedure.
The limitations of this study were cross sectional design of the study and small sample size of the studied population.
In sum, the results of current study indicated that there was not significant relation between BAC and BMD in our studied population, but it seems that increasing age has an important role in both developing BAC and reducing BMD. For obtaining more conclusive results further studies with larger sample size and considering the severity of BAC is recommended.

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