HealthDay News — Age at first childbirth is associated with diabetes risk in postmenopausal women, with risk decreasing as age increases, study findings suggest.
Women aged 19 years or younger when they had their first child were at significantly greater risk for diabetes after menopause compared with women who were aged 30 years or older at first childbirth (23.8% vs. 10.9%, respectively), Jin Hwa Kim, MD, PhD, from Chosun University Hospital in Gwangju, South Korea, and colleagues reported in Diabetes Care.
They examined the correlation between age at first childbirth and glucose tolerance status among 4,965 postmenopausal women who participated in the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Continue Reading
Overall, 21.8% of participants had impaired fasting glucose (1,066 out of 4,965) and 15.3% had diabetes (774 out of 4,965).
Being aged 19 years or younger at first first childbirth was significantly correlated with diabetes (odds ratio 1.492; 95% CI: 1.005-2.215), after adjusting for potentially confounding variables, including lifestyle, sociodemographic factors, known diabetes risk factors and reproductive factors, the researchers found. There were no significant associations observed for age at first childbirth and impaired fasting glucose.
“In conclusion, age at first childbirth influenced diabetes in postmenopausal women, and adolescent pregnancy was independently associated with a higher risk of diabetes in postmenopausal women,” the authors write.
