Menstrual Cycle Hormone Changes in Women Traversing the Menopause: Study Of Women's Health Across the Nation.

Menstrual Cycle Hormone Changes in Women Traversing the Menopause: Study Of Women's Health Across the Nation.

J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2017 Mar 22;:

Authors: Santoro N, Crawford SL, El Khoudary SR, Allshouse AA, Burnett-Bowie SA, Finkelstein J, Derby C, Matthews K, Kravitz HM, Harlow SD, Greendale GA, Gold EB, Kazlauskaite R, McConnell D, Neal-Perry G, Pavlovic J, Randolph J, Weiss G, Chen HY, Lasley B

Abstract
Context: Menstrual cycle hormone patterns in women approaching menopause are inadequately studied.
Objective: To describe day-to-day menstrual cycle hormones in women as they approach menopause from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Daily Hormone Study (DHS).
Design: DHS enrollees collected daily urine for one entire menstrual cycle or up to 50 days, whichever came first, annually, up to the final menstrual period (FMP) or for up to 10 years.
Setting: 7 sites across the US.
Participants: 511 premenopausal or early perimenopausal women at enrollment, within 10 years before menopause.
Intervention: time-to-FMP measurement.
Main Outcome Measures: Evidence of luteal activity (ELA), determined using objective algorithms. Menstrual cycle/segment length; whole cycle and segment integrated urinary LH, FSH, estrone conjugates (E1c) and pregnanediol glucuronide (Pdg) for each year, organized around the FMP.
Results: Mean menstrual cycle length was remarkably preserved at 26-27 days in ELA cycles; non-ELA cycles had greater variability. The % cycles that were ELA remained high until 5 years before the FMP (87.9%); only 22.8% of cycles within 1 year of the FMP were ELA. Whole cycle hormones remained relatively stable up to 3 years before the FMP, when gonadotropins began to increase. Pdg excretion declined slowly with progress to the FMP, but Pdg patterns of ELA cycles remained distinguishable from non-ELA.
Conclusions: Menstrual cycle hormone patterns in perimenopausal women resemble those of midreproductive aged women until 5 years before menopause and presumably ovulatory cycles retain a potentially fertile pattern up to the end of reproductive life.

PMID: 28368525 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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