The Relation between Demographic Characteristics and Age of Menopause among Women in Zahedan

Early and late menopauses result in various physical and mental complications. On the other hand, family health primarily depends on mother's health. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the social factors related to age of natural menopause in Zahedan. Methods and Materials: This cross-sectional study was carried out on 300 menopausal women in Zahedan during 2008. Subjects were randomly selected from 38 health centers. The sampling was started from a random point near each health center continued until 13 appropriate individuals were selected from every center. The data were collected by interviews with women. Data analysis was conducted in SPSS using independent t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and principal component analysis.

This study showed mean ± SD and median age of menopause as 47.3 ± 6.3 and 48 years, respectively. The socioeconomic and menstrual-reproductive factors that were significantly related to early mean age of menopause were celibacy (44.6 years, P = 0.04), low income level (45.3 years, P = 0.043), low social class (45.2 years, P = 0.048), and smoking (45.8 years, P = 0.039).

In addition to genetic and menstrual-reproductive factors, social factors especially socioeconomic factors can also affect the age of natural menopause. Since of menopause is related with some diseases, complications and mortality among women, this phenomenon should be noticed as an epidemiological issue in societies and early menopause should be prevented.