Prevalence of Dysmenorrhea and Its Correlating Lifestyle Factors in Japanese Female Junior High School Students

Abstract

Dysmenorrhea is a common menstrual disorder experienced by adolescents, and its major symptoms, including pain, adversely affect daily life and school performance. However, little epidemiologic evidence on dysmenorrhea in Japanese adolescents exists. This cross-sectional study aimed to determine the prevalence of and identify factors associated with dysmenorrhea in Japanese female junior high school students. Among 1,167 girls aged between 12 and 15 years, 1,018 participants completed a questionnaire that solicited information on age at menarche, menstruation, and lifestyle, as well as demographic characteristics. Dysmenorrhea was defined based on menstrual pain using a Visual Analog Scale (VAS), with moderate or severe (moderate-severe) dysmenorrhea, which adversely affects daily life, defined as VAS ≥ 4, and severe dysmenorrhea defined as VAS ≥ 7. The prevalence of moderate-severe dysmenorrhea was 476/1,018 (46.8%), and that of severe dysmenorrhea was 180/1,018 (17.7%). Higher chronological and gynecological ages (years after menarche) were significantly associated with a higher prevalence of dysmenorrhea regardless of severity (P for trend < 0.001). In addition, short sleeping hours (< 6/day) were associated with moderate-severe dysmenorrhea (OR = 3.05, 95%CI: 1.06-8.77), and sports activity levels were associated with severe dysmenorrhea (P for trend = 0.045). Our findings suggest that dysmenorrhea that adversely affects daily activities is highly prevalent, and may be associated with certain lifestyle factors in junior high school students. Health education teachers should be made aware of these facts, and appropriately care for those suffering from dysmenorrhea symptoms, absentees, and those experiencing difficulties in school life due to dysmenorrhea symptoms.

The Prevalence of Dysmenorrhea in Iran: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…The prevalence in guidance and high school students was less than university students, which was comparable to the studies reported by Kazama et al (2015) and Agarwal and Venkat (2009). In these studies, the prevalence of dysmenorrhea increased with age (49,50).…”

Prevalence of Dysmenorrhea and its Effects on School Performance: A Crosssectional Study

“…The possible reasons for the discrepancy among the estimates could be the difference in the life style of study subjects, the difference in use of selected age group, difference in perception of pain during menstruation, the absence of universally accepted technique of defining dysmenorrhea, a probable disparity in the methods of data collection, study definitions of dysmenorrhea and pain. But our study was consistent with studies done in Japanese Female Junior High School Students and other studies as mentioned by Kazama et al [12], Unsal et al [19], Kumbhar et al [23] and Charu et al [25].…”

“…The Chisquare analysis also showed that dysmenorrhea is responsible for significant absenteeism from class (X 2 =15; df=2; p=0.001), loss of concentration (X 2 =12.85; df=2; p=0.02), lack of focus on exam (X 2 =7.4; df=2; p=0.025). Different studies agree with our study findings [9,[12][13][14]17,18,[21][22][23][24]. The negative effect of dysmenorrhea comes at its peak when it brings about missed exams and absenteeism.…”

“…In Japanese high school students the prevalence reported was 72.8% [12]; findings from Mansoura University-Egypt, showed relatively high prevalence of dysmenorrhea, that was 78.8% among technical secondary schools girls [13].…”

“…The most common effects were class absenteeism as reported in [9,12,13,17,[21][22][23][24], unable to concentrate on their classes or study [13,14,17,18], had bad relationships with their families/friends [13,14,18], unable to do homework [17] and missed exam [24].…”