title: Earlier age at menarche in girls with rapid early life growth: cohort and within sibling analyses.
abstract: The purpose of the article was to examine the association of early life growth with age at menarche.
  
  
  
  Using data from a prospective birth cohort (n = 1134 women, 290 sibling sets), we assessed the association between postnatal growth at 4 months, 1 year, and 4 years and age at menarche, using generalized estimating equations and generalized linear random effects models.
  
  
  
  Overall, 18% of the cohort experienced early menarche (<12 years). After accounting for postnatal growth in length, faster postnatal change in weight (per 10-percentile increase) in all three periods was associated with an increase (range 9%-20%) in the likelihood of having an early menarche. In adjusted linear models, faster weight gains in infancy and childhood were associated with an average age at menarche that was 1.1-1.3 months earlier compared with stable growth. The overall results were consistent for percentile and conditional growth models. Girls who experienced rapid growth (defined as increasing across two major Centers for Disease Control and Prevention growth percentiles) in early infancy had an average age at menarche that was 4.6 months earlier than girls whose growth was stable.
  
  
  
  Faster postnatal weight gains in infancy and early childhood before the age of 4 years are associated with earlier age at menarche.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY.
authors.forename: Julie D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Flom
authors.affiliation: The Center for Research on Women and Children's Health, The Child Health and Development Studies, Public Health Institute, Berkeley, CA.
authors.forename: Barbara A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Cohn
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY; Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY.
authors.forename: Parisa
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tehranifar
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY.
authors.forename: Lauren C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Houghton
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY.
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY.
authors.forename: Angeline
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Protacio
authors.affiliation: The Center for Research on Women and Children's Health, The Child Health and Development Studies, Public Health Institute, Berkeley, CA.
authors.forename: Piera
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cirillo
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA; Institute for Prevention and Cancer Epidemiology, Freiburg University Medical Center, Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Karin B
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Michels
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY; Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY; The Imprints Center for Genetic and Environmental Lifecourse Studies, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY. Electronic address: mt146@columbia.edu.
authors.forename: Mary Beth
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Terry
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent / Q000502:physiology*; D041923:Adolescent Development / Q000502:physiology*; D000367:Age Factors; D001827:Body Height / Q000502:physiology*; D001835:Body Weight / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008572:Menarche / Q000502:physiology*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D035781:Siblings; D014481:United States
keywords: Birthweight; Childhood growth; Infant growth; Lifecourse epidemiology; Maternal; Menarche; Prenatal; Puberty