CAM Use in Midlife Women in Five Ethnic Groups

说明（由申请人提供）：一般来说，妇女是保健的主要消费者，特别是补充和替代医学的主要消费者。1999年，美国女性花费6亿多美元用于辅助生殖激素治疗更年期。关于绝经期CAM使用的流行程度，选择CAM与传统治疗绝经期的中年妇女的特点，以及不同种族/民族和绝经状态变化的CAM使用类型和流行程度的差异，我们知之甚少。在过去的10年里，针对更年期管理的辅助辅助治疗的营销和使用急剧增加，然而，关于妇女对辅助辅助治疗的选择如何影响更年期期间传统保健的使用，人们知之甚少。到2025年，美国绝经后妇女的数量将是20世纪90年代中期的两倍，妇女在选择传统激素治疗和/或辅助生殖激素治疗时的选择的变化以及这些选择的结果是自去年WHI宣布以来越来越重要的话题。因此，女性可能会求助于辅助生殖疗法，但这些疗法没有得到充分研究，也不一定没有副作用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Women are the primary consumers of health care in general and of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in particular. In 1999, women in the United States spent more than $600 million for CAM therapies for menopause. Little is known about the prevalence of CAM use during menopause, characteristics of midlife women who choose CAM versus conventional therapies for menopause, and differences in types and prevalence of CAM use by racial/ethnic groups and with changes in menopausal status. Marketing and use of CAM for menopause management has increased dramatically in the past 10 years, yet very little is known about how women's choices about CAM may affect use of conventional health care during menopause. By the year 2025, the number of postmenopausal women in the United States will double that of the mid-1990s Changes in women's choices in selecting conventional hormone therapy and/or CAM use across the menopausal transition and the outcomes of these choices are topics that have taken on increased importance since the WHI announcements over the past year. Women may turn to CAM as a result, but these remedies are less well-studied and not necessarily free of adverse effects. The present application proposes to undertake analyses of data collected baseline through the annual 06 follow-up visit in the multi-ethnic cohort of 3300 midlife women included in the longitudinal Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) and the CAM Supplement to the 2002 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The specific aims of the present application are: 1) To examine longitudinally racial/ethnic differences in and the demographic, lifestyle and medical factors that affect initiation and continuation of CAM use; 2) To determine the types of problems for which women use specific types of CAM in midlife and whether these differ by race/ethnicity and change longitudinally with changes in menopausal status; and 3) To compare the types of and reasons for CAM use in the SWAN cohort of midlife women, to those in women of similar age and racial/ethnic groups who were administered the 2002 NHIS supplemental CAM questionnaire. These aims will be achieved through secondary data analyses of existing data collected in the SWAN cohort from baseline through the sixth annual follow-up visit and comparison of the SWAN data to the 2002 NHIS CAM use data for the third aim. Our hypotheses emanate from preliminary examination of early data on CAM use in the cohort of midlife women in SWAN. The results of the present analyses will make a valuable contribution, not only to understanding the prevalence of CAM use in midlife women, but also the factors that affect use and the reasons for CAM use in this age group and how these reasons and determinants and types of CAM use vary by race/ethnicity and over the menopausal transition.