Premenstrual disorders, or PMDs, affect millions of women worldwide, but shockingly little is known about their long-term effects. Menstruation can often be uncomfortable as the uterus prepares to shed, and for some, the effects can be horrifying. An estimated 5 to 8 percent of women experience moderate to severe symptoms that significantly impair their lives, mental health, and ability to function normally.
According to a recent nationwide observational research conducted in Sweden, women with PMDs are more likely to attempt suicide. As a matter of fact, their risk of suicide death is about twice that of women without PMDs. This is a dismal result that makes a strong case for the need for additional research to better understand PMDs and assist those who are affected by them.
Menstruating individuals will normally experience 480 periods during the course of their lifetime, with a cycle lasting 23 to 38 days on average. The premenstrual phase, which makes up around 25 percent of the cycle, lasts for about a week before the onset of menstruation. For many, especially those with problems, that means going through premenstrual symptoms for an extended period of time. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is the most severe of them, characterized by mood swings, intense anxiety, rage, and melancholy.
According to earlier research, women with these diseases are more likely to experience accidental injuries and to exhibit suicidal thoughts and behaviours. To gain more insight, Opatowski and her colleagues carried out cohort research to look into the relationship between PMDs and mortality.
This kind of research tracks a certain population throughout time to see how changes occur within that group of people. They tracked death outcomes for 67,748 women with PMDs diagnosed between January 1, 2001, and December 31, 2018, using several Swedish population registers. Each patient was randomly matched to five women without a PMD diagnosis, for a total of 406,488 women.
Next, they looked at the causes of death as well as the mortality rates for these categories. Women without PMDs saw 1,958 fatalities, or 9.1 deaths per 10,000 person-years, while women with PMDs saw 367 deaths, or 8.4 deaths per 10,000 person-years.
This indicates that there was no overall increased risk of death for women with PMD diagnoses. However, the likelihood of dying from non-natural causes—such as accidents, but especially suicide—was higher. In contrast to women without PMDs, who had 1.06 deaths per 10,000 person-years, women with PMDs had a higher rate of suicide—2.3 deaths per 10,000 person-years.
Previous studies have discovered a strong comorbidity between PMDs and psychiatric diseases, which are typically linked to greater death rates. However, the heightened risk persists even after taking this into consideration.
The primary goal of the research was to determine whether a correlation could be found for any cause of death; it does not address why the link existed.
It’s interesting to note that women with PMDs were shown to have a decreased chance of dying from cardiovascular diseases. This may be as a result of the women’s continued communication with their healthcare practitioners. Alternatively, it can be related to medicine; both hormone replacement therapy and the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants that are frequently recommended for PMDs can offer protection against certain cardiovascular illnesses.
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