Cohort study, 2025
Do women with premenstrual disorders have higher risk of heart disease?
Yes. Women with premenstrual disorders have about 10-11% higher risk of cardiovascular disease compared to women without premenstrual disorders. This risk is higher if the disorder began before age 25 or occurred alongside perinatal depression.
What they did
Swedish nationwide cohort study from 2001 to 2022. Researchers tracked women with and without premenstrual disorders and recorded which ones were later diagnosed with cardiovascular disease. They also compared sisters with and without premenstrual disorders to control for shared family factors.
What they found
Women with premenstrual disorders had a 1.11 times higher risk of any cardiovascular disease compared to women without premenstrual disorders. This finding held true in sibling comparisons (1.10 times higher). The risk was particularly pronounced in women whose premenstrual disorder started before age 25 and in those with both premenstrual disorder and perinatal depression.
What it means for you
Premenstrual disorder appears to be linked to cardiovascular disease risk, and the link is not entirely due to shared family factors. However, it is unclear whether the premenstrual disorder itself causes the increased cardiovascular risk or whether both conditions share common causes. Main limitation: we cannot prove cause and effect from this study.
99,411
Women with premenstrual disorders in main analysis
1.11
Increased risk of cardiovascular disease (adjusted)
1.10
Increased risk in sibling analysis
About the study
- Original title
- Premenstrual disorders and risk of cardiovascular diseases
- Authors
- Yang Y, Bränn E, Zhou J et al.
- Journal
- Nature cardiovascular research
- Year
- 2025
- Study design
- Cohort study
- Participants
- 99,411
- Open access
- Yes
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.1038/s44161-025-00684-4
Original abstract
Several lines of evidence indicate a potential link between premenstrual disorders (PMDs) and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). However, it remains unclear whether women with PMDs have a higher risk of CVDs. Here we present a Swedish nationwide population-based matched cohort study from 2001 to 2022 and a sibling matched cohort to address familial confounding. A total of 99,411 women with PMDs were included in the population analysis and 36,061 women with PMDs in the sibling analysis. Compared with individuals without PMDs, women with PMDs had a higher risk of any CVD (adjusted hazard ratio = 1.11 (95% confidence interval: 1.08-1.13) in the population analysis and 1.10 (95% confidence interval: 1.06-1.15) in the sibling analysis). The risk was particularly pronounced for PMDs diagnosed before 25 years of age and PMDs with comorbid perinatal depression. Our study shows that women who received a PMD diagnosis in specialist or primary care are at a higher risk of CVDs.
Reproduced under CC-BY.