The Influence of Early Menopause on Baroreflex Sensitivity in Healthy Females

Introduction: The risks of hypertension (HTN) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) rise dramatically in females around the typical age of menopause (TM; menopause age ≥46yr). Early menopause (EM; menopause age 0.05 for all. Further, cBRS and sBRS were similar between TM (cBRSup: 9.7±3; cBRSdown: 12.3±7; cBRStotal: 12.3±7ms/mmHg; sBRS: -2.7±1bursts/100Hb/mmHg) and EM (cBRSup: 8.7±4; cBRSdown: 11±5; cBRStotal: 10.4±4ms/mmHg; sBRS: -2±1bursts/100Hb/mmHg; p>0.05 for all). Conclusion: Contrary to our hypothesis, these findings suggest that EM may not influence BRS. These findings indicate that completing menopause early may not disrupt autonomic baroreflex function, suggesting that other mechanisms need to be explored to better understand the increased CVD risk in postmenopausal females who complete menopause prematurely or early. This study was supported by a NIH 1 K01 AG064038-01A1 (MLKR), UMN Grant-in-Aid (MLKR), F32HL160012 (EL), and NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences grant UL1TR002494. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.