Our study comprises a cohort of women enrolled in the Tremin Trust, who have been providing detailed prospective reports of menstrual and reproductive histories, and information on life-cycle events and health status for up to 30 years. From 150 of these women, we are collecting daily first-morning urine specimens during a 6-month window during each of the five project years. The specimens are assayed for the principal steroids and gonadotropins involved in regulating ovarian cycles and in signaling reproductive aging. Statistical models link the women's menstrual, reproductive, and health related histories to the experience of the transition, model the effects of hormonal patterns on menstrual bleeding during the perimenopause, and relate features of the transition to the underlying process of follicular depletion.

This work differs from other studies of the menopause in several important
respects. First we have access to decades worth of prospectively-reported
data. Second, unlike most other studies of the endocrinology of the meno-
pause, we work with a population-based cohort of women who were all recruited
well before the transition. Thus, they are not selected for any aspect of their ex-
perience of the transition. Third, we propose to develop and apply new mathematical
models that allow us to link characteristics of the menopausal transition to prior history and underlying biological mechanisms. The work complements, but does not reproduce, the current NIA initiative.

The project gives new insight into the patterns and causes of variation in a women's experience of the menopausal transition, yields a better understanding of how individual-level experience gives rise to population-level patterns of reproductive aging, enriches clinical practice by providing information on how past menstrual patterns are linked to experience throughout the menopausal transition, and provides a foundation for future epidemiological studies of the health consequences of patterns of reproductive aging. The data set produced in conjunction with this research will provide a rich resource for future investigators.

A public use data set and full documentation for the hormone study are available from the ICPSR.

For publications please click on this link: Publications.