Underweight women are at increased risk for early menopause, a new study has found. The study, in Human Reproduction, followed 78,759 premenopausal women ages 25 to 42 beginning in 1989. Over the following 22 years, 2,804 of them reported natural menopause before age 45. After controlling for smoking, pregnancies, oral contraceptive use and other factors, they found that compared with women who had a body mass index of 18.5 to 22.4 (within the normal range), those with a BMI less than 18.5 at any age had a 30 percent increased risk of early menopause. Overweight women (BMI 25 to 34.9) had a slightly lower risk of early menopause. The lead author, Kathleen Szegda, who was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, when the work was done, said that the reasons for the link between weight and the timing of menopause were unclear, and that more research was needed to replicate these results.

Type 3c diabetes is more common than thought

British scientists say Type 3c diabetes may be more common than previously thought, saying some people with Type 2 may have been misdiagnosed. The study, published in Diabetes Care, found that about 1.5 percent of 31,789 new cases of diabetes over a 10-year period were diagnosed as Type 2 instead of Type 3c. One percent of new cases were Type 1 diabetes, making Type 3 more common in adults in this research. The study says Type 3c forms differently than the first two. Type 1 diabetes typically forms in childhood and is when your body doesn't produce insulin at all, while Type 2 is seen in adults when your pancreas can't keep up with insulin demand. Type 2 is usually related to weight gain and poor eating habits. Type 3c, however, is seen after damage is done to the pancreas due to inflammation, cystic fibrosis, cancer or surgery. Type 3 affects the pancreas' ability to produce insulin but also the body's ability to properly digest food.

News services