Overview
- Researchers analyzed more than 300 million laboratory tests from over one million women in US and Israeli datasets to reconstruct when menopause occurred and trace average biological changes around that timing.
- Key sex‑hormone patterns began long before the last period with anti‑Müllerian hormone falling about 15 years prior, follicle‑stimulating hormone rising about 14 years prior, and estradiol declining about 12 years prior.
- In the U.S. data the team detected statistically abrupt changes in 52 of 90 routine lab measures, mainly affecting bone density, liver and kidney function, blood chemistry and blood lipids.
- Women recorded as receiving menopausal hormone therapy showed weaker and less abrupt shifts in many measures, but the comparison is observational, subject to selection biases, and cannot establish that therapy caused the differences.
- The findings point to a concentrated window of increased long‑term risk for osteoporosis and cardiovascular and metabolic disease, so clinicians and researchers say prospective cohorts and randomized trials are needed before changing prevention or treatment guidance.