The relationship between age at menarche and infertility among Chinese rural women.
OBJECTIVE
To explore the relationship between age at menarche and infertility.


METHODS
The cross-sectional study investigated 6906 couples from the communities in Sandu Shui Autonomous County of Guizhou Province, China. Face to face interviews were conducted to collect information on age at menarche and time to first pregnancy, as well as demographic characteristics and lifestyle factors. Infertility was defined as being unable to become pregnant after attempting for ≥12 months. Poisson regression was used to assess the relationship between age at menarche and infertility of first attempt.


RESULTS
The prevalence rate of infertility for the first pregnancy attempt of the study population was 11.87%. There is an obvious monotonic, almost linear, trend of prevalence rate of infertility with increasing age at menarche (P for trend: <0.001). Compared with wives with age at menarche of 13 years, the prevalence ratios of infertility were 0.71 (95%CI: 0.42, 1.20), 1.33 (95%CI: 1.05, 1.68), 1.47 (95%CI: 1.17, 1.85), 1.57 (95%CI: 1.20, 2.04), 1.41 (95%CI: 1.00, 1.99) and 1.73 (95%CI: 1.18, 2.52) for wives with age at menarche of ≤12, 14, 15, 16, 17 and ≥18 years, respectively, after adjusting for wife's year at birth, age at marriage, ethnic group, education and occupation, and husband's smoking and drinking habits before marriage.


CONCLUSIONS
The present community-based study indicated that increasing age at menarche was associated with an increased risk of infertility in the study population.
Department of Reproductive Epidemiology and Social Science, Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research, Shanghai, China.
Jianping
J
Chen
Guizhou Family Planning Research Institute, Guiyang, China.
Chunli
C
Zhong
Department of Reproductive Epidemiology and Social Science, Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research, Shanghai, China.
Hong
H
Liang
Guizhou Family Planning Research Institute, Guiyang, China.
Yuan
Y
Yang
Jiangmen Wuyi Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Guangzhou, China.
Ou
O
Zhang
Department of Reproductive Epidemiology and Social Science, Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research, Shanghai, China.
Ersheng
E
Gao
Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Department of Environmental Health, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH 45267, USA.
Aimin
A
Chen
Department of Reproductive Epidemiology and Social Science, Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research, Shanghai, China.
Wei
W
Yuan
Department of Reproductive Epidemiology and Social Science, Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research, Shanghai, China.
Jian
J
Wang
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China. Electronic address: Feisun@ustc.edu.cn.
Fei
F
Sun
Department of Reproductive Epidemiology and Social Science, Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research, Shanghai, China. Electronic address: miaomaohua@163.com.
Maohua
M
Miao
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007246:Infertility / Q000453:epidemiology*; D008572:Menarche; D011247:Pregnancy; D015995:Prevalence; D012424:Rural Population
Age at menarche; Infertility; Prevalence ratio