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Abstract
Objective To systematically review published articles for the prevalence of menopausal symptoms in Asian women.
Methods A comprehensive and systematic literature search was performed using MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, SCOPUS and Google scholar in June 2013 to retrieve all English-language studies that included information on the prevalence of menopausal symptoms in women living in Asian countries. Risk of bias of included studies was assessed using a risk-of-bias tool explicitly designed for the systematic review of prevalence studies.
Results Twenty-three independent studies met our inclusion criteria. Physical symptoms were the most prevalent symptoms compared to psychological, vasomotor and sexual symptoms. There was a wide variation in the prevalence of all symptoms across the menopausal stages due to the differences in modes of recruitment, study design, sampling procedures, the time frame over which symptoms were assessed and use of different diagnostic or screening tools. A high level of bias was observed for both external and internal validity for most studies.
Conclusion Although there is a wide variation in the reported prevalence of menopausal symptoms, physical symptoms predominate, followed by psychological symptoms, vasomotor symptoms and sexual symptoms. Further studies of representative samples are necessary to understand whether the variations in prevalence reporting are a function of methodological issues or due to ethnic, cultural or other socioeconomic differences.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to Lorena Romero, a librarian at The Ian Potter Library at The Alfred Hospital, and Kaye Lasserre, a librarian at the Hargrave-Andrew Library at Monash Universty, Melbourne for their assistance in searching the literature.
Conflict of interest S.R.D. is a consultant and investigator for Trimel Pharmaceuticals Canada and has received research funding support from Lawley Pharmaceuticals and Besins Healthcare. The other authors have no competing interests to declare.
Source of funding M. R. Islam and Ms. Gartoulla are each supported by Monash University International Postgraduate Research Scholarships. Dr Davis is an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow (grant number 1041853).