Predictors of Age at Menarche in the Newcastle Thousand Families Study

Abstract

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Summary. Several studies have found relationships between early life factors (birth weight, length of gestation, height, weight, duration of breast-feeding, maternal age, social class, periods of infection, presence of adverse life events, and quality of housing conditions in childhood) and age at menarche but none has considered all of these factors in the same study. The follow-up study of the Newcastle Thousand Families birth cohort, established in 1947, provided age at menarche data collected retrospectively at age 50 from 276 women who returned self-completion questionnaires in 1997. Three main independent associations were observed: girls who experienced a shorter gestation, girls whose mothers were younger when they were born, and girls who were heavier at age 9 had earlier menarche. Birth weight, standardized for gestational age, was found to have different relationships with age at menarche depending upon how heavy or light a girl was at age 9. The results of this study support the hypotheses that conditions in fetal and early life are associated with the timing of menarche and that greater childhood growth is associated with earlier menarche. It is suggested that future work should focus on illuminating the mechanisms underlying these statistical relationships.

Nutritional Determinants of the Timing of Puberty

“…Similarly, among 215 German children, no relation was found between exclusive breastfeeding ≥4 months and age at pubertal growth spurt, an outcome closely related to the timing of puberty (49). Prospective studies in Germany (40), Great Britain (8), and the midwestern United States (85) found no independent relation between breastfeeding and menarcheal age. In a study of 101 5-year-old girls and boys from the United States who were either predominantly breastfed or predominantly formula fed, investigators found no difference in reproductive organ volumes or characteristics (4).…”

The preventive effect of breast-feeding for longer than 6 months on early pubertal development among children aged 7–9 years in Korea

“…Nutrition during infancy is directly associated with weight gain, which also has a dominant effect on the development of puberty. Although breast-feeding has been recommended to prevent early puberty, there are conflicting opinions regarding whether breast-feeding is related to a decrease in age of puberty onset (8)(9)(10)(11) . Recently, a study reported that an additional month of breast-feeding decreases the risk of earlier menarche (5) , but that study did not consider postnatal growth.…”

Age at Menarche and Age at First Sexual Intercourse: A Prospective Cohort Study

“…Factors regulating AAM are not well understood, but in developed countries, about one-half of the variation in AAM is thought to be genetic. 1,2 Other mediating factors include birth and childhood body size, [3][4][5][6] adiposity, 3,7 growth, [8][9][10] race/ethnicity, [11][12][13] socioeconomic position, [13][14][15][16][17] family relationships and structure, 11,16,18,19 and exposure to childhood adversity and trauma. 20,21 Younger AAM has widely been proposed as a risk factor for early first sexual intercourse (FSI).…”