Quality of life among postmenopausal Ecuadorian women participating in a metabolic syndrome screening program

Background: Quality of life decreases after the menopause as it has been assessed by several designed tools. Despite this, few studies have reported correlations between quality of life and the metabolic syndrome and its determinants. Objective: Evaluate quality of life and determine factors related to its impairment among postmenopausal Ecuadorian women. Methods: Postmenopausal women that participated in a metabolic syndrome screening and educational program at the Institute of Biomedicine of the Universidad Católica of Guayaquil, Ecuador were interviewed using the Menopause-Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire (MENQOL). Mean domain scores as well as factors associated to higher scores within each of the domains of the questionnaire (vasomotor, psycho-social, physical and sexual) were determined. Results: Three hundred twenty-five postmenopausal women (n = 325) were surveyed. Mean age of participants was 55.9 ± 8.1 years (median: 54 years). Women presented metabolic syndrome, hypertension, hyperglycemia, hypertriglyceridemia and abdominal obesity in 41.5%, 38.8%, 16.6%, 56.9% and 54.2% respectively. Mean scores obtained for each domain were: vasomotor: 3.5 ± 2.5 (median 3); psycho-social: 3.7 ± 1.5 (median 3.6); physical: 3.8 ± 1.2 (median 3.8); sexual: 4.9 ± 2.3 (median 5.3). More than 50% of women had scores above the median for each domain of the questionnaire. Logistic regression determined that vasomotor score decreased with age. Abdominal obesity increased the risk of having vasomotor, psycho-social and physical scores above the median. Hypertension and hyperglycemia increased the risk for higher scores within the psycho-social and sexual domain respectively. Conclusion: In this postmenopausal Ecuadorian population, impairment of quality of life was found to be associated to age and related conditions such as abdominal obesity, hypertension and hyperglycemia.