Reproductive System & Sexual Disorders: Current Research
Open Access

Abstract

Menarche Age of Mothers and Daughters and Correlation between them in Saudi Arabia

Abdulmoein Eid Al-Agha, Sawsan Alabbad, Bara’ah Tatwany and Aseel Aljahdali

Objective: Menarche is the hallmark maturation event of every female child. The menarcheal age of mothers is thought to be a good predictor of the menarcheal age of daughters. The aim of this study is to evaluate the current age at menarche of young girls and to examine its correlation with that of mother’s menarcheal age.

Materials and methods: This was a questionnaire-based cross sectional study conducted at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The target study population included young girls between ages 12 and 16 years, experiencing Age at menarche. The sample size for analyzing the relationship between menarcheal age of daughters and mothers was 165. SPSS 16 was used to analyze the extracted data.

Results: The mean menarche age for the mothers (12.97 ± 1.71 years) was significantly higher than the daughters (11.5 ± 1.48 years). In addition, a significant positive correlation was observed between mother's menarcheal age and daughter's menarcheal age (r=0.264, P=0.023).

Conclusion: The results of the survey clearly demonstrated that a phenomenon of acceleration is involved. Various environmental and genetic factors are also involved which influences the age at menarche. It is essential to broaden the cross sectional study with regards to other factors such as body mass index and physical activity at Menarcheal age.