Weight and Menopause

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue will focus on changes in weight, weight distribution and body composition during the menopausal transition, examining factors (e.g., diet, physical activity, changes in endocrine or other physiologic functions, stress, social support, anxiety, depressive symptoms, etc.) that are related to these weight-related outcomes and variables that may modify these relations (e.g., race/ethnicity, comorbidities, etc.). Manuscripts considered suitable for consideration and review for this special issue will be restricted to quantitative studies (including results of either observational studies or randomized controlled trials) of women during and after the menopausal transition and critical systematic reviews of such human studies.

Prof. Ellen Gold
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. For the first couple of issues the Article Processing Charge (APC) will be waived for well-prepared manuscripts. English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.

Additionally, please follow the instructions below when preparing the paper:

1. The word limit is 3500 words including abstract, text and references;

2. The Abstract includes the objective of the study, a sentence or two about the methods used, the source of the population, when and where data were collected and how many participants were included, as well as a summary of results and a statement about the public health or clinical implications of the work;

3. The Introduction concludes, after making clear what the gaps in the existing literature are that this project fills and the rationale for the project, citing recent (within the last 10 years) relevant studies, with a clear statement of the objective of the study with research questions or hypotheses;

4. The Methods section includes a complete description of the eligibility criteria, methods for sampling, recruiting and screening for eligibility, as well as eligibility and participation rates, and an indication that written informed consent was obtained from all study participants and that a suitable institutional review board reviewed and approved the study protocol;

5. The Methods section also includes a justification for the sample size and a complete description of the data collection measures used with citations of any standard instruments and/or psychometrics for any instruments developed for this study;

6. The Data Analysis subsection of the Methods section has a very complete description of the analysis methods, including in the case of a quantitative study, progressing from descriptive statistics, criteria for identifying and retaining confounding variables in multivariable models, consideration of effect modifying variables, and description of multivariable analyses and criteria for assessing fit of multivariable models, and in the case of a critical systematic review of the literature the search engines and key words used and the methods used for coding and quality control of coding of papers included in the review (e.g., CONSORT or STROBE criteria or others);

7. The Results section should provide an unbiased, complete presentation of results, which emphasizes the results of multivariable analyses; and

8. The Discussion section should integrate the findings with existing literature and describe the new contributions of this study to the literature as well as the limitations of the study.

• weight
• body mass index
• body fat
• body composition
• visceral fat
• menopause
• perimenopause
• menopausal transition