Early menstruation, as many people don’t know, is actually a risk factor for behavioral and psychosocial issues in adolescents and has also been linked to diseases like breast cancer later in life. According to recent research, early menstruation may be directly linked to lower vitamin D levels. The results of this study could have essential and promising implications for young girls throughout the world.
The age that menstruation has beginning for young girls has actually been declining for some time now. In the year 1901, a report from the American Gynecological Society noted that the average age that menstruation begins throughout North America is 14 years. More recent reports have shown that the beginning age of menstruation is now closer to 12.5 years according to data collected from 1965 through 1985.
Associate professor from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and researcher for this study, Eduardo Villamor, noted that the starting age for menstruation has been slowly declining throughout the entire world for a number of years. Because of this slow decline, researchers believe that perhaps there is some environmental causes responsible for the decline since the genetics of puberty have remained the same.
One possible environmental cause leading to the decline of the age of menstruation is lower levels of vitamin D. In order to properly evaluate this theory, a research team measured the vitamin D levels in the blood of 242 girls ranging in age from 5 to 12 years old. All of the girls involved in the study were from Bogota, Colombia and remained part of the study for a total of 30 months.
Researchers discovered that about 57% of the girls whose vitamin D levels were lower reported to have started menstruation during the span of the study, while 23% of the girls had normal levels of vitamin D. The girls with lower levels of vitamin D were on average, 11.8 years old when menstruation began and girls that had normal vitamin D levels began menstruation at around 12.6 years.
According to Villamor, researchers have little understanding regarding which environmental factors can trigger the onset of puberty. Villamor notes that if researchers are able to determine the cause of the age of decline, then they may be able to develop an effective intervention to stop girls from beginning menstruation too early.
Another new study was published recently in the Environmental Research Journal. Researchers from Taiwan discovered that women who experienced exposure to environmental toxins such as PCB’s between the ages of 5 and 9, tended to start menstruation earlier. In the Reproductive Toxicology journal, a study was done which concluded that there was an association between DES and early menstruation.
This study conducted by Villamor and other researchers is essential and promising because it marks a possibility in terms of a correlation between low levels of vitamin D and early menstruation. More research will need to be conducted to better determine if increasing the vitamin D level in girls will cause an increase in the age of menstruation.
References:
Hatch, EE. Et al. Reproductive Toxicology. 2011. 31 (2): 151-57.
Medical News. 1901. From the Proceedings of the 26thMeeting of the American Gynecological Society.
Yang, CY. Et al. Environmental Research. 2011.
Mitchell, D. 2011. Low vitamin D levels and early menstruation linked.