Quality of life after the menopause in Iran: a population study.
OBJECTIVE
Quality of life (QoL) decreases after the menopause as it has been assessed by several designed tools. The aim of the present research was to assess QoL and determine factors related to its impairment among postmenopausal Iranian women.


METHODS
This cross-sectional study was conducted through cluster sampling among 480 postmenopausal women in Yazd, Islamic Republic of Iran, in 2008. Data were collected using the menopause quality of life questionnaire (MENQOL) by interviewing. Content validity and Cronbach's alpha were used, respectively, to ensure the validity and reliability of the questionnaires. Inferential and descriptive statistics via SPSS.15 software was used for data analysis.


RESULTS
The results showed that the menopausal women have worse QoL scores in vasomotor dimension and higher QoL scores in physical dimension. Univariate analysis showed that there were significant differences in the MENQOL scores by age, number of children, education, postmenopausal stage, employment status, and BMI. Women aged 60-65 (P < 0.05), with a university level of education (P < 0.01), who had employment (P < 0.01), who had postmenopausal stage 5 or more years (P < 0.05), with a body mass index <or=18.5 kg m(-2) (P < 0.05), and who had significantly lower scores indicating better quality of life. Logistic regression determined that vasomotor score decreased with age. Employment and number of children decreased the risk of having psychosocial scores above the median. Postmenopausal stage >or=5 increased the risk for higher scores within the sexual domain, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
Menopause causes a decrease in quality of life, which is dependent to work and other socio-demographic variables. Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective intervention programs to improve quality of life after menopause.
Fallahzadeh
Hossien
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Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Health, Yazd Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran. hofaab@yahoo.com
D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D015992:Body Mass Index; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D016015:Logistic Models; D008875:Middle Aged; D017698:Postmenopause / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors