Can Blood Iron Levels Help Differentiate Menopausal Status?

Nov 16
In a recent investigation, scientists from the University of Bern, Lausanne, and Epistudia in Switzerland, along with the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, examined the iron levels in women's blood to determine if they could be indicative of menopausal status. The study involved more than 1,600 women from Switzerland, with an additional group of over 2,100 women from the Netherlands for validation. They utilized markers such as ferritin, transferrin and transferrin saturation, to evaluate iron levels.

In both groups of women, researchers found that markers like ferritin, transferrin, and transferrin saturation were linked to menopausal status. Combining a woman's age with these iron markers improved the accuracy in determining menopause status. The combination of age, ferritin, and transferrin performed the best. It had a high sensitivity of 87.1% and specificity of 96.5%, which was up to 7.5% more accurate than using age alone. In the group of women from the Netherlands, they found that combining age with a different iron marker called hepcidin was the most accurate way to determine menopause status.

The researchers concluded that these iron markers can modestly help in identifying if a woman is in menopause, but more research is needed to validate these findings and explore their clinical utility, especially regarding hepcidin. The project was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

You can access the full article for reading https://www.maturitas.org/article/S0378-5122(23)00478-4/fulltext