Rome, Italy: Researchers have developed a way of accurately predicting when women will hit the menopause using a simple blood test. The average difference between the predicted age and the actual age that the women in their study reached the menopause was only a third of a year, and the maximum margin of error was between three and four years.
Dr Fahimeh Ramezani Tehrani will tell the 26th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Rome today (Monday) that her findings have implications for women and their doctors; if the results of the research are supported by larger studies, it means that women will be able to discover early on in their reproductive life what their expected age at menopause will be, so that they can plan when to start a family.
By taking blood samples from 266 women, aged 20-49, who had been enrolled in the much larger Tehran Lipid and Glucose Study, Dr Ramezani Tehrani and her colleagues were able to measure the concentrations of a hormone that is produced by cells in women's ovaries anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH). AMH controls the development of follicles in the ovaries, from which oocytes (eggs) develop and it has been suggested that AMH could be used for measuring ovarian function. The researchers took two further blood samples at three yearly intervals, and they also collected information on the women's socioeconomic background and reproductive history. In addition, the women had physical examinations every three years. The Tehran Lipid and Glucose Study is a prospective study that started in 1998 and is still continuing.
Dr Ramezani Tehrani, who is President of the Reproductive Endocrinology Department of the Endocrine Research Centre and a faculty member and Associate Professor of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran, said: "We developed a statistical model for estimating the age at menopause from a single measurement of AMH concentration in serum
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| Contact: Emma Mason wordmason@mac.com European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology Source:Eurekalert |
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