Age-Specific Blood Levels of Hormone Predict Menopause

The age-specific blood levels of the Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) predict when women will reach menopause.

A study included 257 healthy women who were monitored for as long as eleven years. Dutch investigators from the University Medical Center Utrecht (The Netherlandsl) measured AMH levels to the point when the women entered menopause and, based on these data, constructed a model to predict the menopausal age. Using age and AMH, the age range in which menopause will occur could be individually predicted.

Generally, women enter menopause between the age of forty and sixty. A woman's fertility, however, ends ten years prior to this and can even occur around the age of thirty. With regard to family planning and a career, it is extremely valuable for women to know the expected length of their fertility.

This knowledge will enable women who are predicted to become infertile at an early age to choose the option of having their eggs frozen. This means that they will still be able to have children if it turns out that they can no longer get pregnant spontaneously. University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands, offers women the possibility of having eggs frozen and stored in a human egg bank.

The study was conducted under the leadership of gynecologists Prof. Frank Broekmans and Prof. Bart Fauser. "Women often postpone having children until their career has been well established. However, they may find that it is difficult to get pregnant at this time. It could therefore be very useful for women to know beforehand up to which age they remain fertile. As far as we know, we are the first researchers worldwide to succeed in making long term predictions for individual women," the gynecologists said.

The findings were published online May 26, 2011, in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

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University Medical Center Utrecht