Soy intake and vasomotor menopausal symptoms among midlife women: a pooled analysis of five studies from the InterLACE consortium

Background/objectives: Phytoestrogen rich-foods such as soy may be associated with less frequent/severe vasomotor menopausal symptoms (VMS), although evidence is limited. We thus investigated the associations between the consumption of soy products and soy milk and the frequency/severity of VMS.

Subjects/methods: We pooled data from 19,351 middle-aged women from five observational studies in Australia, UK, USA, and Japan that contribute to the International Collaboration for a Life course Approach to reproductive health and Chronic disease Events (InterLACE). Information on soy consumption, VMS and covariates were collected by self-report. We included 11,006 women who had complete data on soy consumption, VMS and covariates at baseline for the cross-sectional analysis. For the prospective analysis, 4522 women who were free of VMS at baseline and had complete data on VMS at follow-up were considered. Multinomial logistic regression and binary logistic regression models were used.

Results: No statistically significant evidence of an association was found between soy products (relative risk ratio (RRR): 0.92, 95% CI: 0.76–1.11) or soy milk (RRR: 1.24, 95% CI: 0.93–1.65) and the likelihood of reporting frequent or severe VMS cross-sectionally. Prospective results indicated that frequent consumption of soy products (odds ratio (OR): 0.63, 95% CI: 0.45–0.89) but not soy milk (OR: 1.11, 95% CI: 0.85–1.45) was associated with lower likelihood of reporting subsequent VMS, after adjustment for socio-demographic and reproductive factors.

Conclusions: These are the first ever findings from pooled observational data of association between consumption of soy products and VMS.