An analysis of 300 million lab test results obtained from more than a million women suggests that menopause could be having more extensive impact on the body than previously thought.
The study, titled “Dynamics of Menopause from Deconvolution of Millions of Lab Tests”, compared the data of women from two countries, Israel and the United States. Instead of exploring the correlation between women’s ages, scientists searched for biological changes occurring around a woman’s final menstrual period.
The outcomes were remarkable. The scientists observed changes in tests relating to sex hormones, bones, liver, level of cholesterol, kidney functioning, muscle functionality, level of iron, blood cells, inflammation, and metabolic processes. This indicates that menopause might not be just a transition occurring only in the reproductive system but could have far more extensive implications.
Another interesting discovery was related to the fact that hormonal changes started long before the final menstrual period, approximately 10 years prior. This can provide an explanation of the cause of some health or metabolic changes experienced by women during perimenopause prior to the cessation of their menstrual cycle.
The scientists also noticed that abrupt changes in biological functions were less expressed in women taking hormonal replacement therapy. However, this is not a causal statement and thus cannot be considered as evidence of the effectiveness of HRT in preventing biological changes.
The study has its limitations. The researchers analysed existing hospital records, which means that the causality of changes cannot be proved. Also, since it is a preprint, this means that findings should be treated as preliminary, as the research needs peer review.
Nevertheless, the whole scale of the research is impressive. Should these findings be confirmed, they could make the doctors and researchers reconsider their understanding of menopause as a broad biological transition affecting various systems and not just simply the end of menstruation.
Reference:
Pridham et al., Dynamics of menopause from deconvolution of millions of lab tests (2025 preprint).
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.05906
More About the Research
Why this study is different
Menopause is already known to involve major hormonal changes, particularly changes in oestrogen and other reproductive hormones. Researchers have also known for years that the menopause transition can coincide with changes in bone health, body composition, cholesterol, metabolism and cardiovascular risk.
What makes the Pridham study particularly interesting is its scale and the way the researchers attempted to analyse the data.
The researchers examined approximately 300 million laboratory test results from more than one million women across two large population datasets, including data from Israel and the United States. Rather than simply comparing women of different ages, they developed a statistical method designed to estimate where biological changes occurred relative to the final menstrual period (FMP).
This distinction matters because chronological age and menopause do not happen at exactly the same time for every woman. If researchers simply compare 45-year-old women with 55-year-old women, it can be difficult to separate changes associated with aging from changes specifically associated with menopause.
What did they find?
The researchers reported step-like changes around the final menstrual period across a surprisingly broad range of laboratory measurements.
The largest changes were observed in sex hormones, but the reported patterns extended into measurements related to bone, liver, lipids, kidney function, muscle, iron, red blood cells, inflammation and other physiological systems. The researchers also reported that similar patterns were observed in both major datasets.
This does not mean that menopause suddenly causes every one of these health problems. Rather, it suggests that the biological transition around menopause may be detectable across multiple systems of the body.
Interestingly, the study also reported evidence of hormonal dysregulation beginning more than a decade before the final menstrual period. If confirmed by further research, this could help explain why the perimenopause period can involve substantial biological changes even before menstruation permanently stops.
Is this completely new?
Not necessarily.
Previous research has already shown that menopause is associated with changes outside the reproductive system. For example, research has documented changes in metabolic biomarkers during the menopause transition, including alterations in lipoproteins and inflammatory markers. One study found that several metabolic changes persisted or became somewhat stronger after women became postmenopausal.
Menopause is also associated with important changes in bone and cardiovascular health. Reviews have described increased cardiovascular risk factors and accelerated bone loss around the menopause transition, particularly when menopause occurs at a younger age.
So the new preprint is better understood as potentially expanding the picture rather than discovering that menopause affects systems other than reproduction for the first time.
What about hormone replacement therapy?
The researchers reported that women using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) appeared to have less pronounced step-like changes in some biological measurements. However, this is one of the areas where it is especially important not to overinterpret the findings.
The study was based on existing observational data and was not a randomised clinical trial designed to determine whether HRT prevents these changes. Women who use HRT can differ from women who do not use it in many ways, and these differences can influence laboratory measurements.
Therefore, the finding should be viewed as an interesting association that deserves further investigation, rather than proof that HRT prevents systemic biological changes caused by menopause.
Why the findings need confirmation
The enormous size of the dataset is impressive, but a very large dataset does not automatically establish causation.
The study used existing laboratory records and a computational method to reconstruct biological changes around the final menstrual period. This approach can reveal patterns that might be difficult to identify in smaller studies, but it also depends on the quality and characteristics of the underlying data and the assumptions of the statistical method.
There is another important consideration: the research was initially released as a preprint, meaning it had not yet gone through the normal peer-review process at the time of publication on arXiv.
That does not mean the findings are wrong. It simply means that other researchers still need to evaluate the methods, results and interpretation independently.
A broader view of menopause
Perhaps the most interesting idea here is that menopause may be better understood as a major biological transition rather than simply the point at which menstrual periods stop.
The existing scientific literature already points toward changes involving cardiovascular health, metabolism and bone health. This large-scale analysis raises the possibility that the transition may be visible across an even wider range of physiological systems.
If future studies confirm these findings, they could provide researchers with a much more detailed picture of what happens throughout perimenopause and after the final menstrual period.
For now, however, the most appropriate conclusion is a cautious one: the study provides intriguing evidence that menopause may be associated with widespread biological changes, but further peer-reviewed research is needed to determine exactly which changes are caused by the menopause transition, when they begin, and what they mean for long-term health.
References
Pridham, G., Hayut, Y., Lavi-Shoseyov, N., et al. (2025). Dynamics of menopause from deconvolution of millions of lab tests. arXiv preprint.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.05906E., et al. (2018). Metabolic characterisation of menopause: cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29402284/Anagnostis, P., & Stevenson, J. C. (2024). Cardiovascular health and the menopause, metabolic health. Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37183085/Nash, Z., Al-Wattar, B. H., & Davies, M. (2022). Bone and heart health in menopause. Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35400590/National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). (2024). Menopause: identification and management Evidence review on early menopause. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK609726/
