Objective: To investigate whether body mass index (BMI), abdominal obesity, and fat distribution in postmenopausal women influence quality of life.
Design: Cross-sectional survey.
Setting: Outpatient clinics in the hospital setting and private practices.
Patient(s): 274 postmenopausal Spanish women, distributed by body phenotype, fat distribution (android or gynoid), and BMI.
Intervention(s): The Cervantes scale, a specific health-related quality of life (HRQOL) questionnaire.
Main outcome measure(s): The quality of life of the obese and overweight patients was compared by age, sex, education, marriage, and municipality with matched healthy normal-weight controls.
Result(s): Women of the pyknoid phenotype have worse general HRQOL, menopausal symptoms, and psychological and sexuality scores than athletic or lean women. Android fat distribution is also related to low global Cervantes scale scores. All scores on the Cervantes scale worsened with increasing BMI (>or=25).
Conclusion(s): Pyknoid phenotype, android fat distribution, and a higher BMI are related to poor HRQOL.