Predicting menopause with a simple blood test

A time when many women take the risk of delaying pregnancy in order not to jeopardize their careers, to anticipate the arrival of menopause, infertility and thus will not fail to arouse a deep interest.

But the work of a team of Iranian researchers presented Monday at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology to predict, on average, nearly four months, the age at which a woman will be postmenopausal.

To do this, the group of Prof. Fahimeh Ramezani Tehrani Tehran (University of Shahid Beheshti Medical Sciences) measured in 266 women of 20-49 years the levels of anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) secreted by the ovaries. This method, already presented in 2008, has developed a statistical model to accurately predict the arrival of menopause depending on the evolution of the concentration of the hormone that naturally declines over time.

The researchers were thus able to determine in advance the age of 63 women in the study actually reached menopause. The average difference between predicted age and actual age for its occurrence was only four months, and the maximum margin of error of three to four years.

The discoveries around the WHA are primarily of interest to women who will be menopausal prematurely. This allows them, if they wish to start a family, not to be caught short.  With an average age of menopause at age 51, doctors believe that early menopause if the woman is aged 45 years and it is premature if the patient is 40 or less.

This early, on 2% female population, does not mean that they can have children until that date because the sterility occurs on average five years earlier, ten to twelve years in some cases . Until now, shorter menstrual cycles and family history were the best predictors of early menopause.

Should all women undergo this test? Such systematization is an ethical issue: Is it easy to live with the knowledge that there is little time to have children, when not trying to start a family yet?  The whole problem of predictive medicine. However, it can consider offering this test during a consultation for contraception, the same way that we look for the lipid risk factor or risk of hypertension.

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