OBJECTIVE To measure the plasma concentration of leptin, which is expressed in ovarian follicles and may have a reproductive function, in healthy women during the menstrual cycle. DESIGN This study included nine women with regular menstrual cycles (mean+/-S.E.M. age 28+/-2 years: body mass index 23.9+/-1.8 kg/m2). From the onset of menses, fasting blood samples were collected every 1-2 days t...

ariations in a number of human behaviors during the menstrual cycle are well known. The luteal phase, compared with the follicular phase, has a well-documented increase in the incidence of depression, accidents, hospital admission, suicidal thinking, and suicide. The immediate premenstrual and menstrual period in women is associated with an increased frequency of examination failure, work absen...

BACKGROUND/AIMS The symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) fluctuate considerably over time. However, it has not been determined whether these symptoms are affected by the menstrual cycle in female IBD patients. This study analyzed the effects of the menstrual cycle on IBD symptom variation. METHODS This was a prospective study of 91 study subjects (47 IBD patients and 44 healthy contro...

Hormonal changes associated with menstrual cycle are known to affect different organ systems. Fluctuation in the ovarian hormones during different phases of menstrual cycle – menstrual, follicular, and luteal phases may affect the cardiovascular and respiratory function in young healthy women. Seventy-five healthy Indian female subjects, 18-25 years old, from in and around Mangalore district we...

The menstrual cycle has attracted research interest ever since the 1930s. For many researchers the menstrual cycle is an excellent model of ovarian steroid influence on emotion, behavior, and cognition. Over the past years methodological improvements in menstrual cycle studies have been noted, and this review summarizes the findings of methodologically sound menstrual cycle studies in healthy w...

It is well known that hormones affect both brain and behavior, but less is known about the extent to which hormones affect economic decision-making. Numerous studies demonstrate gender differences in attitudes to risk and loss in financial decision-making, often finding that women are more loss and risk averse than men. It is unclear what drives these effects and whether cyclically varying horm...

1. Nailfold capillary pressure, digital blood flow and skin temperature have been measured on days 7, 14, 21 and 28 of the menstrual cycle in 10 women on a combined oral contraceptive pill and 10 control subjects with normal menstrual cycles. 2. Capillary pressure and digital blood flow were statistically significantly higher in the group taking an oral contraceptive pill compared with control ...

Sleep consolidates newly acquired memories. Beyond stabilizing memories, sleep is thought to reorganize memory representations such that invariant structures, statistical regularities and even new explicit knowledge are extracted. Whereas increasing evidence suggests that the stabilization of memories during sleep can be facilitated by cueing with learning-associated stimuli, the effect of cuei...

BACKGROUND Classification of menopausal status is important for epidemiological and clinical studies as well as for clinicians treating midlife women. Most epidemiological studies, including the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), classify women based on self-reported bleeding history. METHODS The Women's Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation (WISE) study developed an algorithm using men...

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) has been implicated in the representation of emotional stimuli, assignment of emotional valence/salience to stimuli, stimulus-reinforcement association learning, motivation, and socio-emotional control. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in female subjects without premenstrual mood symptoms, we found that OFC activity to emotional linguistic stimuli varie...