Age at menarche and the related issue: a pilot study on urban school girls.

Age at onset of menarche was determined for a group of 91 newly menstruating urban school girls in Bangladesh. Girls who had had their menarche within the last year were selected as subjects for the study. The 1-year cohort was selected so as to minimize the gap between the age at menarche and the variables of weight, height, and per capita food expenditure (PFE) to be correlated with it. Results concerning the age at menarche show that almost 80% of the girls started their menstruation at between 11 and 15 years of age. The mean and median ages at menarche are 12.67 and 12.81 years, respectively, which is well ahead of rural girls. Results indicate that age at menarche has a positive relationship with weight, but is negatively correlated with PFE. This significant inverse relationship indicates that a lower age at menarche has a close association with a higher per capita expenditure on food. There is also an inverse relation between the weight and the height of the newly menstruating girls, suggesting the existence of some unstable trend in their physiological processes. The positive correlation between age at menarche and weight indicates that the higher the age at menarche, the heavier the girls, suggesting that some minimal level of body fat is necessary for the onset of menarche. The 0 association between the weight and the PFE is also an unexpected result. Weight may be considered an indicator of an individual's health condition, which is supposed to be dependent on the food expenditure of that individual. Therefore, the 0 association in this result may have some other explanation which is yet to be determined. Similarly, the positive relationship obtained between height and PFE is not enough to find any significant association between one's body growth and better nutrition. A questionnaire for parents on the eating habits of the girls indicated that about 51% usually eat fish with rice, and 49% eat vegetables with rice. Almost 40% of the girls get no eggs or milk at this important age, and 80% receive no butter.