Excerpt
SUMMARY: Four out of five middle-aged women cope with hot flashes, night sweats and other uncomfortable consequences of menopause. Now, the largest study of its kind has shown that those symptoms can last much longer than previously thought, and are worse for some women of color. Judy Woodruff learns more from Dr. Nancy Avis of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): It’s well known that four out of every five middle-aged women deal with hot flashes, night sweats and other difficult symptoms of menopause. New research finds those symptoms often last a great deal longer than conventional wisdom had it.
It comes from the largest study of its kind done so far of more than 3,300 women. It concluded that the median duration for hot flashes lasted 7 years, and that in some cases symptoms can last as long as 14 years. Moreover, the problems were worse for some women of color.
The median duration was 10 years for African-American women and almost nine years for Latinas.
Nancy Avis is the lead researcher of the study. She’s a professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Professor Avis, thank you for joining us.
What is different that was learned in this study that wasn’t previously understood?
DR. NANCY AVIS, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center: I think one of the things that was different is that we were able to follow women for a longer period of time. So we did learn that there are women who experience hot flashes for at least seven — 14 years, that up to 40 percent of our sample was still experiencing hot flashes, night sweats after 14 years.
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