Background. We studied to what extent internet-based cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) programs for symptoms of depression and anxiety are effective.

To identify novel loci for age at natural menopause, we performed a meta-analysis of 22 genome-wide association studies in 38,968 women of European descent, with replication in up to 14,435 women. In addition to four known loci, we identified 13 new age at natural menopause loci (P < 5 × 10−8). The new loci included genes implicated in DNA repair (EXO1, HELQ, UIMC1, FAM175A, FANCI, TLK1, POLG, PRIM1) and immune function (IL11, NLRP11, BAT2). Gene-set enrichment pathway analyses using the full GWAS dataset identified exodeoxyribonuclease, NFκB signalling and mitochondrial dysfunction as biological processes related to timing of menopause.

Background. Subthreshold depression is a highly prevalent condition and a risk factor for developing a major depressive episode. Internet-based cognitive behaviour therapy may be a promising approach for the treatment of subthreshold depression. The current study had two aims :(1) to determine whether an internet-based cognitive behaviour therapy intervention and a group cognitive behaviour therapy intervention are more effective than a waiting-list control group ; and (2) to determine whether the effect of the internet-based cognitive behaviour therapy differs from the group cognitive behaviour therapy intervention.

We conducted a genome-wide association study for age at natural menopause in 2,979 European women and identified six SNPs in three loci associated with age at natural menopause: chromosome 19q13.4 (rs1172822; −0.4 year per T allele (39%); P = 6.3 × 10 −11 ), chromosome 20p12.3 (rs236114; +0.5 year per A allele (21%); P = 9.7 × 10 −11 ) and chromosome 13q34 (rs7333181; +0.5 year per A allele (12%); P = 2.5 × 10 −8 ). These common genetic variants regulate timing of ovarian aging, an important risk factor for breast cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease.Menopause, the time of a woman's life when menstrual cycle ceases owing to depletion of the follicle pool, is a key event in reproductive aging. It influences a woman's well-being Europe PMC Funders GroupAuthor Manuscript Nat Genet. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 December 10. Typical for complex quantitative traits, genome-wide linkage studies of menopause have been unsuccessful, and candidate gene studies have mainly focused on the estrogen pathway6 and have had conflicting results7. This suggests that the apparent effect sizes for genetic variants are small and that the major causative loci have not been identified. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have proven successful in identifying common susceptibility genes with small effect sizes for many complex diseases and traits8 and might be suitable to identify genetic factors involved in determining age at menopause.In this GWAS we used a two-stage design to identify previously unknown loci influencing age at menopause. We included women with self-reported natural age at menopause (defined as 12 months without regular periods) between 40 and 60 years, excluding those with hysterectomy, uni-or bilateral ovariectomy, menopause induced by irradiation or occurring after stopping the contraceptive pill, or those currently using hormone replacement therapy.In stage 1 we genotyped 2,368 women of the Rotterdam Study baseline9 with the Illumina HumanHap 550v3 Beadarray. After quality control, 535,354 SNPs were left for analysis. Allelic association tests were carried out using PLINKv1.01 software10 for age at natural menopause. The genomic inflation factor (λ) was 1.01669 for this analysis, indicating no population stratification, so we based our results on the uncorrected P values. The strongest association signals were found for rs2151145 (P = 5.3 × 10 −6 ) on chromosome 9, rs236114 (P = 5.6 × 10 −6 ) on chromosome 20 and rs1172822 (P = 6.3 × 10 −6 ) on chromosome 19 (Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Fig. 1a online).We combined the results from the Rotterdam Study baseline with GWA data from the TwinsUK study. A total of 611 women with natural menopause using the same definitions and exclusions as above were genotyped with the Illumina HumanHap 300K beadarray, and after quality control 317,818 SNPs were left for analysis. After adjusting for relatedness and genomic control, we did not observe any genome-wide significant signals in this study (Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary...

Abstract-It has been hypothesized that women with vasomotor symptoms differ from those without with respect to cardiovascular risk factors or responses to exogenous hormone therapy. We studied whether the presence and extent of menopausal complaints are associated with cardiovascular risk profile. Data were used from a population-based sample of 5523 women, aged 46 to 57 years, enrolled between 1994 and 1995. Data on menopausal complaints and potential confounders were collected by questionnaires. Total cholesterol, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, and body mass index were measured. Linear and logistic regression analyses were used to analyze the data. Night sweats were reported by 38% and flushing by 39% of women. After multivariate adjustment, women with complaints of flushing had a 0.27-mmol/L (95% CI: 0.15 to 0.39) higher cholesterol level, a 0.60-kg/m 2 (95% CI: 0.35 to 0.84) higher BMI, a 1.59-mm Hg (95% CI: 0.52 to 2.67) higher systolic blood pressure, and a 1.09-mm Hg (95% CI: 0.48 to 1.69) higher diastolic blood pressure compared with asymptomatic women. Flushing was also associated with hypercholesterolemia (odds ratio: 1.52; 95% CI: 1.25 to 1.84) and hypertension (OR: 1.20; 95% CI: 1.07 to 1.34). Results were similar for complaints of night sweating. The findings support the view that menopausal complaints are associated with a less favorable cardiovascular risk profile. These findings substantiate the view that differences in the presence of menopausal symptoms as a reason for using hormone therapy could explain discrepant findings between observational research and trials. A number of observational studies demonstrated a protective association between hormone therapy (HT) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). 1-3 Placebo-controlled, randomized trials, however, could not confirm a cardioprotective effect and showed no overall benefit of HT on the risk of cardiovascular events. 4,5 Many potential reasons have been proposed to explain this apparent discrepancy between the observational studies and the trials. An important difference is that, in the observational studies, the most common reason to initiate HT was to relieve menopausal complaints. In contrast, in the trials, women with severe complaints were either excluded or composed only a minority of the total randomized population. Results of a recent subgroup analysis of the combined Women's Health Initiative trials showed that women who initiated HT closer to menopause had a reduced coronary heart disease (CHD) risk compared with the increase in CHD risk among women initiating HT more distant from menopause. 6 Moreover, among women 50 to 59 years old at enrollment in the Women's Health Initiative, end-of-trial coronary calcium scores were lower in women assigned to estrogens than in those assigned to placebo. 7 A younger age is likely to be accompanied by a higher frequency of menopausal complaints.We hypothesized previously that women with vasomotor symptoms may differ from those without with respect to cardiovascular risk factors or responses...