An Observational Study on the Factors Affecting the Age of Menarche

Abstract

INTRODUCTION : Various studies indicate that the average age of menarche has decreased significantly in the last 150 years, which there has been a secular (time-related) trend towards an earlier onset of menarche in most developed countries. In recent years, such a decline has also been observed in developing countries like India. The purpose of the present study was to asses the effect of food and social status on age of menarche in this region. METHODS: Study included 200 girls of age group between 9 to 14 on Voluntary basis after Simple Random Sampling around the schools . After obtaining permission and consent from the school Principal/ class teacher, a predesigned questionnaire was administered and girls were briefly examined by a female doctor. . Detail information about girls and their parents were taken to know the mother’s age at menarche and also to know the socioeconomic status of the family along with other details. RESULTS: Our study shows that age at menarche in higher socioeconomic classes is lower as compare to Lower Socioeconomic class. No significant association between BMI & type of food and average age of menarche was found in our study. CONCLUSIONS: The trend of lowering of age at menarche is well marked as we moved from lower and middle to higher socioeconomic stratum. There is paucity on such data from this region of India; hence further study needs to be done among girls from other areas of the state before the data can be extrapolated to the Indian statistics.