Work ability, functional exercise capacity and prevalence of obesity in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women with non-manual employment

Abstract

Objective. This study aimed to evaluate work ability and functional exercise capacity, and their correlation to each other and to obesity, in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women with non-manual employment. Materials and methods. The study included 300 women aged 44–66 years. The following measures were used: work ability index (WAI), 6-min walk test (6MWT), body mass index (BMI), waist–hip ratio (WHR) and adipose tissue accumulation. Regression models of the WAI and distance in the 6MWT were estimated. Results. The examined women obtained WAI 39.0 ± 5.0, BMI 26.2 ± 4.6, WHR 0.819 ± 0.060 and adipose tissue accumulation 30.1 ± 6.1%, on average. About 19% of women obtained a very good work ability score, 55% good, 23% medium and 3% poor. About 17% of women were obese, 39% overweight and 44% normal body mass, 29% had abdominal obesity, 19% had elevated accumulation of adipose tissue and 21% had high accumulation of adipose tissue. These results did not differ significantly between perimenopausal and postmenopausal women The postmenopausal women obtained a significantly lower functional exercise capacity score than perimenopausal women. Conclusion. Work ability correlates positively to functional exercise capacity, which correlates negatively to adipose tissue accumulation in perimenopausal women with non-manual employment, but not in postmenopausal cases.

Keywords:

• 6-min walk test
• functional exercise capacity
• obesity
• perimenopause
• postmenopause
• work ability index

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Rural Health, Lublin, Poland. The project was entitled ‘Mental and Physical Health of Women in the Peri-menopausal and Post-menopausal Period in Terms of Preserving their Work Ability’. The project is in part the third stage of the multi-annual programme of ‘Improving the Operational Safety and Working Conditions’, which was financed for the years 2014–2016 by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education/National Centre for Research and Development. The Program Coordinator is the Central Institute for Labour Protection – National Research Institute (CIOP–PIB).