Menopausal Hormone Therapy Is Associated With Increased Risk of Fecal Incontinence in Women After Menopause.

ABSTRACT:

Background & aims

Low estrogen levels can contribute to development of fecal incontinence (FI) in women after menopause by altering neuromuscular continence mechanisms. However, studies have produced conflicting results on the association between menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) and risk of FI.

Methods

We studied the association between MHT and risk of FI among 55,828 postmenopausal women (mean age, 73 years) who participated in the Nurses' Health Study, were enrolled since 2008, and with no report of FI. We defined incident FI as a report of at least 1 liquid or solid FI episode per month during 4 years of follow-up from self-administered, biennial questionnaires administered in 2010 and 2012. We used Cox proportional hazard models to calculate multivariate-adjusted hazard

SUBMITTER: Staller K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5447480 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature