Menopause, postmenopausal hormone use and serum uric acid levels in US women--the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

INTRODUCTION: Despite the substantial prevalence of gout in the ageing female population, female hormonal influence has not been comprehensively examined. We evaluated and quantified the potential independent association between menopause, postmenopausal hormone use and serum uric acid levels in a nationally representative sample of women. METHODS: Using data from 7662 women aged 20 years and older in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1988 to 1994), we examined the relation between menopause, postmenopausal hormone use and serum uric acid levels. We used multivariate linear regression to adjust for other risk factors for hyperuricaemia such as dietary factors, age, adiposity, alcohol use, renal function, hypertension and diuretic use. RESULTS: Menopause was associated with higher serum uric acid levels. After adjusting for covariates, serum uric acid levels among women with natural menopause and surgical menopause were greater than premenopausal women by 0.34 mg/dl (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.19 to 0.49) and 0.36 mg/dl (95% CI, 0.14 to 0.57), respectively. Current postmenopausal hormone use was associated with a lower serum uric acid level among postmenopausal women (multivariate difference, 0.24 mg/dl [95% CI, 0.11 to 0.36]). The serum uric acid levels increased with increasing age categories (crude difference between 20 to 29 years and 70 years and over = 1.03 mg/dl, p for trend < 0.001), but this increase was not present after adjusting for other covariates (p for trend = 0.66). CONCLUSIONS: These findings from a nationally representative sample of US women indicate that menopause is independently associated with higher serum uric acid levels, whereas postmenopausal hormone use is associated with lower uric acid levels among postmenopausal women. The age-associated increase in serum uric acid levels in women may be explained by menopause and other age-related factors

Menopause, postmenopausal hormone use and risk of incident gout

Objective: To prospectively study the relation between menopause, postmenopausal hormone use and risk of gout, since female sex hormones have been postulated to decrease gout risk among women. Methods: In the Nurses' Health Study, the association between menopause, age at menopause, postmenopausal hormone use and risk of self-reported physician-diagnosed incident gout among 92 535 women without gout at baseline was examined. Multivariate proportional hazards regression analysis was used to adjust for other risk factors for gout such as age, body mass index, diuretic use, hypertension, alcohol intake and dietary factors. Results: During 16 years of follow-up (1 240 231 person-years), 1703 incident gout cases were recorded. The incidence rate of gout increased from 0.6 per 1000 person-years in women 45 years had a RR of 1.62 (95% CI 1.12 to 2.33) of gout compared with women with age at menopause 50-54 years. Postmenopausal hormone users had a reduced risk of gout (RR=0.82; 95% CI 0.70 to 0.96). Conclusion: These prospective findings indicate that menopause increases the risk of gout, whereas postmenopausal hormone therapy modestly reduces gout risk

Study of cosmogenic radionuclides in the COSINE-100 NaI(Tl) detectors

© 2019 Elsevier B.V.COSINE-100 is a direct detection dark matter search experiment that uses a 106 kg array of eight NaI(Tl) crystals that are kept underground at the Yangyang Underground Laboratory to avoid cosmogenic activation of radioisotopes by cosmic rays. Even though the cosmogenic activity is declining with time, there are still significant background rates from the remnant nuclides. In this paper, we report measurements of cosmogenic isotope contaminations with less than one year half-lives that are based on extrapolations of the time dependent activities of their characteristic energy peaks to activity rates at the time the crystals were deployed underground. For longer-lived 109Cd (T1/2=1.27 y) and 22Na (T1/2=2.6 y), we investigate time correlations and coincidence events due to several emissions. The inferred sea-level production rates are compared with calculations based on the ACTIVIA and MENDL-2 model calculations and experimental data. The results from different approaches are in reasonable agreement with each other. For 3H, which has a long, 12.3 year half-life, we evaluated the activity levels and the exposure times that are in reasonable agreement with the time period estimated for each crystal&apos;s exposure11sciescopu