Fig. 2

Heat map of metabolic concentrations across age groups (top panel) and across reproductive categories (bottom panel). Top panel: age groups are largely in 1-year age categories (at the extremes of age range, groups were collapsed because of small numbers: 34 to 38 years and 59 to 63 years). For each metabolic measure, mean metabolite concentrations across each age group are displayed in colors. The horizontal black line marks the typical age of natural menopause in Europe. Bottom panel: reproductive categories are defined according to the STRAW criteria. For each metabolic measure, mean metabolite concentrations across each menopausal category are displayed in colors. The age range of each reproductive category is shown on the y-axis. As the metabolic measures were scaled to SD units, both analyses (aging and menopause) thus used the population mean of all women at baseline as the reference value, marked as white boxes in the plots. The metabolic measures in both panels are plotted in the same order. C cholesterol, DHA docosahexaenoic acid, FA fatty acids, HDL high-density lipoprotein, IDL intermediate-density lipoprotein, MUFA monounsaturated fatty acids, PL phospholipids, PUFA polyunsaturated fatty acids, TG triglycerides, VLDL very low-density lipoprotein