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Epidemiology

Soy intake and vasomotor menopausal symptoms among midlife women: a pooled analysis of five studies from the InterLACE consortium

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 73, pages 1501–1511 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/objectives

Phytoestrogen rich-foods such as soy may be associated with less frequent/severe vasomotor menopausal symptoms (VMS), although evidence is limited. We thus investigated the associations between the consumption of soy products and soy milk and the frequency/severity of VMS.

Subjects/methods

We pooled data from 19,351 middle-aged women from five observational studies in Australia, UK, USA, and Japan that contribute to the International Collaboration for a Life course Approach to reproductive health and Chronic disease Events (InterLACE). Information on soy consumption, VMS and covariates were collected by self-report. We included 11,006 women who had complete data on soy consumption, VMS and covariates at baseline for the cross-sectional analysis. For the prospective analysis, 4522 women who were free of VMS at baseline and had complete data on VMS at follow-up were considered. Multinomial logistic regression and binary logistic regression models were used.

Results

No statistically significant evidence of an association was found between soy products (relative risk ratio (RRR): 0.92, 95% CI: 0.76–1.11) or soy milk (RRR: 1.24, 95% CI: 0.93–1.65) and the likelihood of reporting frequent or severe VMS cross-sectionally. Prospective results indicated that frequent consumption of soy products (odds ratio (OR): 0.63, 95% CI: 0.45–0.89) but not soy milk (OR: 1.11, 95% CI: 0.85–1.45) was associated with lower likelihood of reporting subsequent VMS, after adjustment for socio-demographic and reproductive factors.

Conclusions

These are the first ever findings from pooled observational data of association between consumption of soy products and VMS.

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Acknowledgements

The data on which this research are based were drawn from five observational studies. The research included data from the ALSWH, the University of Newcastle, Australia, and the University of Queensland, Australia. We are grateful to the Australian Government Department of Health for funding and to the women who provided the survey data. SMWHS was supported in part by grants from the National Institute of Nursing Research. HOW and JMWHS (also called Australian and Japanese Midlife Women’s Health Study) were supported by the Queensland University of Technology Early Career Research Grant and the JSPS Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research. The Whitehall II study is supported by grants from the Medical Research Council (K013351), British Heart Foundation (BHF RG/16/11/32334) and US National Institutes on Aging (R01AG013196 and R01AG034454). All study teams would like to thank the participants for volunteering their time to be involved in the respective studies. The findings and views in this paper are not those from the original studies or their respective funding agencies.

Funding

InterLACE project is funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council project grant (APP1027196). GDM is supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Principal Research Fellowship (APP1121844). YD is in receipt of a scholarship from the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, UK. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nutritional Epidemiology Group, School of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Yashvee Dunneram, Janet E. Cade & Darren C. Greenwood

  2. School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Hsin-Fang Chung, Annette J. Dobson & Gita D. Mishra

  3. Family and Child Nursing, School of Nursing, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Ellen S. Mitchell

  4. Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Systems, School of Nursing, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Nancy F. Woods

  5. Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, UK

    Eric J. Brunner

  6. Department of Women’s Health Nursing, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan

    Toyoko Yoshizawa

  7. Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Debra Anderson

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  1. Yashvee Dunneram
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Contributions

The authors’ responsibilities were as follows—GDM: conceived the study; YD, HFC and GDM: designed the research and had primary responsibility for the final content; JEC, DCG, AJD, ESM, NFW, EJB, TY and DA: contributed to the data; YD: performed the statistical analysis and wrote the manuscript; HFC, DCG, JEC, AJD and GDM: provided statistical input, helped with interpretation of the results and reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content; and all authors: read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yashvee Dunneram.

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Conflict of interest

JEC is the director of a university spin out company, Dietary Assessment Ltd. The remaining authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Sources of support: Commonwealth Scholarship, Australian National Health and Medical Research Council project grant (APP1027196 & APP1121844)

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Dunneram, Y., Chung, HF., Cade, J.E. et al. Soy intake and vasomotor menopausal symptoms among midlife women: a pooled analysis of five studies from the InterLACE consortium. Eur J Clin Nutr 73, 1501–1511 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-019-0398-9

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