Girls who menstruate before they’re 12 are more vulnerable to early menopause

Girls who start menstruating at 11 or younger are at an increased risk of early or premature menopause, claims a new study, adding that the risk increases if they do not bear children.

Girls who start menstruating at 11 or younger are at an increased risk of early or premature menopause, claims a new study, adding that the risk increases if they do not bear children.

The study, which is published in Human Reproduction, indicates that the risk of premature or early menopause in women who have early periods increases five-fold and two-fold respectively when compared to women who had their first period aged 12 or older and those with two or more children.

“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 lead researcher Gita Mishra from Queensland in Australia.

The study looked at 51,450 women among which most of them were born before 1960, with two-thirds born between 1930 and 1949.

The results suggest that women who started their menstrual periods aged 11 or younger had an 80 percent higher risk of experiencing a natural menopause before the age of 40 and a 30 percent higher risk of menopause between the ages of 40-44, when compared with women whose first period occurred between the ages of 12 and 13.

Women who had never been pregnant or who had never had children had a two-fold increased risk of premature menopause and a 30 percent increased risk of early menopause.

In this study only 12 percent of the women remained childless and it is possible that they may have remained childless due to ovarian problems, which may or may not have been detected and which might also be implicated in the early onset of menopause, the researchers concluded.

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