Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Nobel Medicus, cilt.6, sa.2, ss.20-24, 2010 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
• Objective: Menarche is an indicator of general health and living conditions in a society and deviations in its timing due to several factors may lead to future health problems. Our aim was to find the mean menarcheal age and affecting factors in a selected group of students in Istanbul. • Material and Method: A survey consisting 65 questions was distributed to 1000 female students and 558 of them who answered the questions completely were considered eligible. • Results: The mean age of the students included in the study was 15.59±1.9 years and their mean menarcheal age was 12.62±1.1 years. The mean menarcheal age of their mothers' was 13.33±1.59 years. Menarche was mostly affected by mother's (r=0.247) menarcheal age and secondly by Body Mass Index (BMI) (r=-0.167). The socio-economical index (r=0.088) was weakly correlated with the onset of menarche. Cycling resulted in a significantly delayed menarche (p=0.027). Monthly income of 1000$ and number of rooms in the house were moderately correlated with menarcheal age (r=-0.124, r=-0.127). Mother-daughter menarcheal age correlations were not significant in low socio-economical level group (r=0.19) while in high socio-economical level group, the significance of the correlation between BMI and mean menarcheal age has disappeared r=0.19, p=0.066). The correlation between the mean menarcheal age of the students and their mothers has persisted independent of body mass index (p=0.0003). • Conclusion: In our selected population, it has been found that the onset of menarche was strongly correlated with heredity, BMI, physical activity and socio-economical status in descending order.