Blood Pressure Check
A woman has her blood pressure taken at a World Hypertension Day event in Amman May 14, 2010. Reuters/Muhammad Hamed

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) could be an early marker for high blood pressure later in life, suggests a latest study conducted by a joint team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Harvard School of Public Health.

According to the researchers, women who experience moderate-to-severe PMS is at a 40 percent increased risk of developing hypertension in the next 20 years than women who suffer from mild PMS. The researchers claim that their long-term study is the first of its own kind to suggest that PMS is linked to future development of chronic health conditions.

During the study, the researchers analysed the link between PMS and high blood pressure in two groups of women. The first group of 1,257 women showed clinically significant symptoms between the years 1991 and 2005, while the other group of similar-aged 2,463 women showed fewer symptoms.

The researchers noticed the occurrence of symptoms such as nausea, dizziness, palpitations, cramping, insomnia, acne, depression and hot flashes. Even after taking into account other risk factors such as body mass index, alcohol use, family history of hypertension and smoking, the researchers found that the women from the first group were three times more likely to develop high blood pressure before the age of 40, as compared to the second group of women.

The research team followed the same group of women until 2011. “They found women with PMS had a hazard ratio for hypertension of 1.4 compared to women without PMS, a statistically significant increased risk of 40 per cent,” the researchers report in the study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

In addition, the team found that the risk was lower in women with high intakes of B vitamins thiamine and riboflavin. The researchers thus concluded that improving rate of consumption of vitamin B in women with PMS can help reduce the severity of menstrual syndrome and associated risk of hypertension.

Contact the writer at feedback@ibtimes.com.au, or let us know what you think below.