BACKGROUND Puberty is a transition period making physiological development a challenge adolescents have to face. Early pubertal development could be associated with higher risks of poor health. Our objective was to examine risk behaviours, physical and psychological determinants associated with early menarche (<11 years). METHODS Early menarche was assessed in the Health Behaviour in School-a...

STUDY QUESTION Do birthweight (BW) and co-twin sex influence the age at menarche in twins? SUMMARY ANSWER BW, but not co-twin sex, was associated with age at menarche in twins. However, BW was not associated with age at menarche after controlling for genetics and shared rearing environment. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY Nutritional deprivation during critical developmental periods can trigger long-...

The first menstrual bleeding is known as Menarche. It marks the beginning of the reproductive phase in a woman's life. It serves as an intermediate health outcome that affects the women's wellbeing at later stages of life. It is also considered as an indicator of quality of life. This study was a cross sectional retrospective (i.e. recall) study carried out in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh India. Mu...

BACKGROUND Age of puberty has declined substantially in developed settings and is now declining in the rest of the world with economic development. Early age of puberty is associated with non-communicable diseases in adulthood, and may be a long-term driver of population health with effects over generations. In a non-Western setting, we examined the association of maternal age of menarche with ...

Remarkably little is known about associations between age at menarche and sexually transmitted infections, although girls with earlier menarche tend to have earlier sexual debut and school drop-out, so an association might be expected. In a population-based survey of >3000 women aged 15-30 in northern Malawi we show that those with earlier menarche had earlier sexual debut, earlier marriage and...

OBJECTIVE We examined the associations between childhood passive smoking exposure and age at menarche in women who had never smoked in southern China. METHODS Among 30,518 participants in Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study (GBCS) from 2003-2008, 20,061 women who had never smoked and had complete outcome data were included. Childhood passive smoking exposure was defined as living with 1 or more sm...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the secular trend of menarche according to body mass index (BMI). SUBJECTS AND METHODS Six hundred and eighty five girls (7-18 years) assessed in 2001 were compared with 750 evaluated in 2010. They were grouped by BMI Z-score: (thin + normal) and (overweight + obese). Menarche was reported by status quo and age at menarche estimated by a logit model. We used the Qui-squa...

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. Re...

The present study was initiated to derive an indirect method for estimating body fat mass (BFM) and to evaluate the correlation between indirect anthropometric techniques for this estimation and to examine the relation of these parameters and of IQ to age of menarche. A total of 578 adolescent girls of ten junior high schools in five educational districts of Mashhad, participated in a cros...