Age at menarche and risk of type 2 diabetes among African-American and white women in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study
Diabetologia - Clinical and Experimental Diabetes and Metabolism,
Dreyfus JG et al. – Early menarche was associated with type 2 diabetes in white women, and adulthood adiposity attenuated the relationship. The authors did not find a similar association in African–American women. The findings suggest that there may be race/ethnic differences in the influence of developmental factors in the aetiology of type 2 diabetes, which merit further investigation.
Methods- The authors analysed baseline and 9-year follow-up data from 8,491 women (n = 2,505 African-American, mean age 53.3 years; n = 5,986 white, mean age 54.0 years) in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study.
- Stratifying by race, they used logistic regression to estimate the OR for prevalent diabetes at baseline, and Cox proportional hazard models to estimate the HR for incident diabetes over follow-up according to age at menarche category (8–11, 12, 13, 14 and 15–18 years).
- Adjusting for age and centre, they found that early age at menarche (8–11 vs 13 years) was associated with diabetes for white, but not African-American women in both the prevalent (white OR 1.72, 95% CI 1.32, 2.25; African-American OR 1.13, 95% CI 0.84, 1.51; interaction p = 0.043) and incident models (white HR 1.43, 95% CI 1.08, 1.89; African-American HR 1.20, 95% CI 0.87, 1.67; interaction p = 0.527).
- Adjustment for adiposity and lifestyle confounders attenuated associations for prevalent (white OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.05, 1.89; African-American OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.68, 1.30; interaction p = 0.093) and incident diabetes (white HR 1.22, 95% CI 0.92, 1.63; African-American HR 1.11, 95% CI 0.80, 1.56; interaction p = 0.554).
