WEDNESDAY, Nov. 29, 2023 (HealthDay News) — For postmenopausal women, a longer reproductive period is associated with a reduced risk for low handgrip strength (HGS), according to a study published online Nov. 28 in Menopause.

Sae Rom Lee, M.D., from the Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital in South Korea, and colleagues examined the association between reproductive period, encompassing menarche and menopause, and HGS in postmenopausal women. The analysis included 2,354 postmenopausal women aged 45 to 75 years.

The researchers found that the more extended the reproductive period, the lower the risk for low absolute HGS; even after controlling for other variables, this trend persisted. The odds ratios (95 percent confidence intervals) for low absolute HGS were 0.752 (0.563 to 1.000) and 0.683 (0.513 to 0.900), respectively, for the second and third versus the first tertile reproductive period. After covariate adjustment, the corresponding odds ratios for low relative HGS were 0.761 (0.551 to 1.052) and 0.732 (0.533 to 0.972) for the second and third versus the first reproductive period.

“This study showed that a longer reproductive period and later age at menopause were linked to a lower risk of low handgrip strength in postmenopausal Korean women,” Stephanie Faubion, M.D., medical director of the North American Menopause Society, said in a statement. “This finding may relate to the beneficial effects of estrogen on skeletal muscle. Additional longitudinal studies are needed in different populations to confirm these findings.”

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