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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Arnot, Megan, Mace, Ruth
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2020
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
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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.
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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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