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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2015;18(6):859-66.
doi: 10.3109/13697137.2015.1083003. Epub 2015 Oct 30.

MsFLASH participants' priorities for alleviating menopausal symptoms

J S Carpenter  1 , N F Woods  2 , J L Otte  1 , K A Guthrie  3 , C Hohensee  3 , K M Newton  4 , H Joffe  5 , L Cohen  6 , B Sternfeld  7 , R J Lau  8 , S D Reed  9 , A Z LaCroix  10
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

MsFLASH participants' priorities for alleviating menopausal symptoms

J S Carpenter et al. Climacteric. 2015.

Abstract

Objective: To describe self-reported menopausal symptom priorities and their association with demographics and other symptoms among participants in an intervention trial for vasomotor symptoms (VMS).

Methods: Cross-sectional study embedded in the MsFLASH 02 trial, a three-by-two factorial design of yoga vs. exercise vs. usual activity and omega-3-fatty acid vs. placebo. At baseline, women (n = 354) completed hot flush diaries, a card sort task to prioritize symptoms they would most like to alleviate, and standardized questionnaires.

Results: The most common symptom priorities were: VMS (n = 322), sleep (n = 191), concentration (n = 140), and fatigue (n = 116). In multivariate models, women who chose VMS as their top priority symptom (n = 210) reported significantly greater VMS severity (p = 0.004) and never smoking (p = 0.012), and women who chose sleep as their top priority symptom (n = 100) were more educated (p ≤ 0.001) and had worse sleep quality (p < 0.001). ROC curves identified sleep scale scores that were highly predictive of ranking sleep as a top priority symptom.

Conclusions: Among women entering an intervention trial for VMS and with relatively low prevalence of depression and anxiety, VMS was the priority symptom for treatment. A card sort may be a valid tool for quickly assessing symptom priorities in clinical practice and research.

Keywords: COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING; FATIGUE; MENOPAUSE; SLEEP DISTURBANCES; SYMPTOMS; VASOMOTOR SYMPTOMS.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Co-occurrence of Menopausal Symptoms Prioritized as Those that Women Would Most Like to Alleviate
Venn diagram depicting overlap among symptom priorities. Numbers are n (%). VMS are vasomotor symptoms. Sleep indicates disturbed sleep. Fatigue refers to feeling tired or worn out. Concentration refers to trouble remembering or concentrating. The four symptoms appeared most often as one of the top three symptoms women would most want to alleviate. There was 1 (0.28%) participant who did not pick any of the top four symptoms, thus this figure reflects n=353. The black center reflects the area of overlap not assessed since women rated their top 3 and not 4 symptoms.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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