Residential surrounding greenspace and age at menopause: A 20-year European study (ECRHS)

Abstract

Background: Menopause is associated with a number of adverse health effects and its timing has been reported to be influenced by several lifestyle factors. Whether greenspace exposure is associated with age at menopause has not yet been investigated. Objective: To investigate whether residential surrounding greenspace is associated with age at menopause and thus reproductive aging. Methods: This longitudinal study was based on the 20-year follow-up of 1955 aging women from a large, population- based European cohort (ECRHS). Residential surrounding greenspace was abstracted as the average of satellite-based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) across a circular buffer of 300m around the residential addresses of each participant during the course of the study. We applied mixed effects Cox models with centre as random effect, menopause as the survival object, age as time indicator and residential surrounding ; Kai Triebner has received a postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Bergen. Payam Dadvand is funded by a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (Grant: RYC-2012-10995) awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance. The present analyses are part of a project funded by the Norwegian Research Council (Grant: 228174). Coordination of the ECRHS I was supported by the European Commission as part of the "Quality of Life" program and the authors and participants are grateful to the late C. Baya and M. Hallen for their help during the study and K. Vuylsteek and the members of the COMAC for their support. Coordination of the ECRHS II was supported by the European Commission as part of the "Quality of Life" program (Grant: QLK4-CT-1999-01237). The coordination of the ECRHS 3 was funded through the Medical Research Council (Grant: 92091). NDVI calculations were conducted within the framework of the Ageing Lungs In European Cohorts study that was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under (Grant: 633212). Bodies funding the local studies are listed in the online data ...