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Sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation
It is often observed that married women have a later age of natural menopause (ANM) than unmarried women; however, the reason for this association is unknown. We test an original hypothesis that sexual frequency acts as a bio-behavioural mediator between marital status and ANM. We hypothesize that t...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7029897/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32218936 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191020 |
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author | Arnot, Megan Mace, Ruth |
author_facet | Arnot, Megan Mace, Ruth |
author_sort | Arnot, Megan |
collection | PubMed |
description | It is often observed that married women have a later age of natural menopause (ANM) than unmarried women; however, the reason for this association is unknown. We test an original hypothesis that sexual frequency acts as a bio-behavioural mediator between marital status and ANM. We hypothesize that there is a trade-off between continued ovulation and menopause based on the woman's chances of becoming pregnant. If a woman is sexually inactive, then pregnancy is impossible, and continued investment in ovulation would not be adaptive. In addition, we test an existing hypothesis that the observed relationship is because of the exposure to male pheromones. Data from 2936 women were drawn from 11 waves of the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation, which is a longitudinal study conducted in the United States. Using time-varying Cox regression, we found no evidence for the pheromone hypothesis. However, we did observe that women who reported to have sex weekly during the study period were 28% less likely to experience menopause than women who had sex less than monthly. This is an indication that ANM may be somewhat facultative in response to the likelihood of pregnancy. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7029897 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-70298972020-03-26 Sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation Arnot, Megan Mace, Ruth R Soc Open Sci Organismal and Evolutionary Biology It is often observed that married women have a later age of natural menopause (ANM) than unmarried women; however, the reason for this association is unknown. We test an original hypothesis that sexual frequency acts as a bio-behavioural mediator between marital status and ANM. We hypothesize that there is a trade-off between continued ovulation and menopause based on the woman's chances of becoming pregnant. If a woman is sexually inactive, then pregnancy is impossible, and continued investment in ovulation would not be adaptive. In addition, we test an existing hypothesis that the observed relationship is because of the exposure to male pheromones. Data from 2936 women were drawn from 11 waves of the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation, which is a longitudinal study conducted in the United States. Using time-varying Cox regression, we found no evidence for the pheromone hypothesis. However, we did observe that women who reported to have sex weekly during the study period were 28% less likely to experience menopause than women who had sex less than monthly. This is an indication that ANM may be somewhat facultative in response to the likelihood of pregnancy. The Royal Society 2020-01-15 /pmc/articles/PMC7029897/ /pubmed/32218936 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191020 Text en © 2020 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Arnot, Megan Mace, Ruth Sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation |
title | Sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation |
title_full | Sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation |
title_fullStr | Sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation |
title_full_unstemmed | Sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation |
title_short | Sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation |
title_sort | sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the study of women's health across the nation |
topic | Organismal and Evolutionary Biology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7029897/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32218936 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191020 |
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