Oxidative stress in post menopausal women with cardiovascular risk factors

Background: Menopause is a normal occurrence in the life of every woman. As the life expectancy of woman all over the world now increases, a woman has to spend almost 1/3 of her life in menopause years. Along with the increase in life expectancy the cardiovascular disease is increasing. Objectives: To study the association between oxidative stress and various cardiovascular risk factors in post-menopausal women. Methods: 50 postmenopausal women with cardiovascular risk factors like hyperglycemia, hypertension, high Body Mass Index and Hyperlipidaemia were selected as cases and compared with 50 age matched apparently healthy controls. Malon-di-aldehyde (MDA) was taken as the marker for oxidative stress and vitamin E & vitamin C were taken to assess antioxidant status. Student’s t-test was applied to compare different parameters between the groups and Pearson’s correlation was applied to see the correlation with different parameters in the case group. Results: It was found that MDA values in postmenopausal women with cardiovascular risk factors were significantly higher as compared to the post menopausal women without cardiovascular risk factors (p < 0.001). There is significant decrease in vitamin E and C values in cases (p is < 0.001 and < 0.01 respectively). Comparing the various oxidative markers in cases and control it was found that MDA values have a significant negative correlation with vitamin E and C (r= -0.4 and r= -0.7 respectively). Whereas correlation between changes in Vitamin E and vitamin C was positive but not significant (r= +0.2, p ˃0.05). Conclusion: Antioxidant medication and other measures can be adopted to reduce oxidative stress in post menopausal women with cardiovascular risk factors and reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with cardiovascular disease.