Effect of age at menopause on blood pressure in postmenopausal women.

Background: A major mechanism of hypertension in many postmenopausal women is deficiency of female gonadal steroids. A long postmenopausal period may thus represent one factor that influences the prevalence of hypertension because of long periods of estrogen loss.

Methods: When we conducted a medical survey in northwestern China, we also asked 150 postmenopausal female subjects to provide age at menopause in a questionnaire.