Association of plant-based diet and early onset of natural menopause

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the association of plant-based diet index (PDI) with early onset of natural menopause in the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII). METHODS: We conducted a prospective study with a mean follow-up time of 20 years among premenopausal women living across the US. Participants of the NHS (n = 121,701) and NHSII (n = 116,429) were included from 1984 (age mean [standard deviation]; 44.9 [4.3]) and 1991 (age mean [standard deviation]; 36.4 [4.6]), respectively. Early menopause was self-reported and defined as natural menopause before age 45 years. PDI was derived from semiquantitative food frequency questionnaires administered every 4 years. Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the association between PDI in quintiles and early menopause in NHS and NHSII separately, and fixed-effect models to pool the results from both cohorts. RESULTS: During follow-up, 715 and 2,185 women experienced early natural menopause in NHS and NHSII, respectively. After adjustment for potential confounders, no association was observed between PDI and incidence of early natural menopause in either cohort, or when pooling the results from both cohorts, with an exception for unhealthy plant-based diet index which was associated with higher risk of early menopause with increasing levels of consumption (P trend = 0.04). CONCLUSION: Adherence to PDI was not associated with timing of menopause while unhealthy plant-based diet might be associated with higher risk of experiencing early menopause.