Yahoo News Women who go through puberty before 12 more likely to suffer early menopause
Women who go through puberty before 12 years old are at increased risk of early menopause, new research suggests.
The first large scale, international study of more than 50,000 women showed that those who were 11 or younger when they started their first period were 80 per cent more likely to enter the menopause before the age of 40.
The figures were compared with women who started menstruating between 12 and 13.
Women who had never been pregnant or who had never had children had a more than two-fold increased risk of premature menopause and a 30 per cent increased risk of early menopause.
The authors suggest that doctors should warn childless women who started their periods early that they were at increased risk of early menopause, for reproductive planning and future health.
"If the findings from our study were incorporated into clinical guidelines for advising childless women from around the age of 35 years who had their first period aged 11 or younger, clinicians could gain valuable time to prepare these women for the possibility of premature or early menopause," said Professor Gita Mishra, Professor of Life Course Epidemiology at the University of Queensland, Australia.
"It provides an opportunity for clinicians to include women’s reproductive history alongside other lifestyle factors, such as smoking, when assessing the risk of early menopause, and enables them to focus health messages more effectively both earlier in life and for women at most risk.
"In addition, they could consider early strategies for preventing and detecting chronic conditions that are linked to earlier menopause, such as heart disease.”
Around 18 per cent of women go through puberty before 12. Likewise two per cent of women suffer premature menopause and 7.6 per cent go through menopause early - between 40 and 44.
The combination of starting periods early and having no children, means that the absolute risk of premature or early menopause for these women is 5.2 per cent and 9.9 per cent respectively.
The study involved 51,450 women who had agreed to take part in nine studies in the UK, Scandinavia, Australia and Japan that contribute to the Life course Approach to reproductive health and Chronic disease Events (InterLACE) international collaboration.
Prof Mishra added: “The message for everyone to take on board from this and other similar studies is to think of the timing of menopause as a biological marker of reproductive ageing, which has implications for health and the risk of chronic diseases.
"So if we want to improve health outcomes in the later life, we need to be thinking about the risk factors through the whole of a woman’s life from the early years and the time of their first period through to their childbearing years and menopause.”
The research was published in the journal Human Reproduction.
