When will your period be over for good? If you’re still planning to have children, you probably hope it’s far in the future. On the other hand, if your family is complete, you may think the end can’t come too soon.
New research from UCLA may help answer that question and give women new opportunities to protect their health as they approach menopause.
Menopause is a time in a woman’s life that begins when she has her last menstrual period. Scientists know that after menopause, women are more likely to develop heart disease and lose bone faster than their bodies can replace it.
Being able to anticipate the date of a woman’s last period is significant because it gives health care providers new opportunities to protect a woman’s health including preparing for the start of menopause-related bone loss.
Just as with the start of your first period, you probably think you’ll just have to wait and see when your monthly cycle will wind to a halt. But scientists at UCLA report that they may now be able to predict the year a woman’s period will end.
The UCLA researchers gathered data through the multi-ethnic Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation, which included Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, Chinese and Japanese women. The data was accumulated over an 11 year span.
The 554 women included in the UCLA research were between the ages of 42 and 53 when the study began. All had an intact uterus and at least one ovary, all had at least one period in the three months prior to the start of the study, and none were taking any medication that would affect ovarian function.
The purpose of the study was to determine if hormone levels indicate how close a woman was to the end of her period. Hormones are chemical messengers released by organs and glands in the body to control other functions.
In women, reproductive hormones regulate the menstrual cycle including preparing eggs to be released from the ovaries, preparing the uterus for a fertilized egg to implant, and cleaning the uterus through the monthly period if no egg is implanted.
Researchers in the study measured estradiol (E2) which is a hormone produced by the ovaries and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) which is produced by the pituitary gland and helps regulate the release of eggs from the ovaries. The levels of these hormones normally change approximately two years before a woman’s period ends.
The UCLA team concluded that considering the levels of both hormones provided an indication of whether a woman was two years from the end of her period, one year from the end, or already past the end of her monthly cycles. This study has significant health implications for women.
"Being able to estimate when the final menstrual period will take place has taken on importance beyond just helping women gauge when they will stop having periods," said Dr. Gail Greendale, professor of medicine in the division of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
"We know that potentially deleterious physiological developments, such as the onset of bone loss and an increase in cardiovascular risk factors, precede the final menses by at least a year."
Previously, doctors could only guess when a woman was within the one-year window of the end of her period. The researcher team believes knowing how close a woman is to the end of her period will give her doctors better opportunities to be proactive to prevent known risks such as bone loss as a woman moves into menopause.
Limitations of this study include the relatively small size of the sample group of women and the fact that the women’s hormone levels were only checked once each year. Checking hormone levels more often might allow researchers to be even more precise in predicting the end of a woman’s period.
This study was published in the April issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Sources:
UCLA Newsroom. Researchers find a way to predict the date of a woman’s final menstrual period. Enrique Rivero. April 8, 2013.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/researchers-find-a-way-to-predict-2...
National Institutes of Health: National Institute on Aging. AgePage Menopause. Web. April 8, 2013.
http://www.nia.nih.gov/health/publication/menopause
Medline Plus. Hormones. Web. April 8, 2013.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/hormones.html
Reviewed April 9, 2013
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith