Age at menarche in Jordanian girls

Abstract

he most important event in the whole process of female puberty is the onset of cyclic menses (menarche).The age of the menarche varies in different part of the world and is known to be influenced by genetic, socio-economic status, and environmental conditions, body status and level of education, 1 age at menarche was first calculated in mid 19th century in Denmark, 2 since then, many authors have used different methods to calculate age at menarche in different parts of the world.Since age of menarche is an important factor in health planning, we reported here the distribution of age at menarche among Jordanian students and compare it to Jordanian women who was born 40 years ago, to look for secular trend on any difference between menarche age now and 20 years ago.Female university students and their female relatives were haphazardly invited from first of June until 30th December 2001 to participate in this study.The student population of the 3 major universities; University of Jordan, Jordan University of Science and Technology and Yarmouk University, Jordan roughly represent the population in Jordan with the exception of the age.The system for university admissions provides allocation for each district according to its population density, and all socio-economic stratum are represented.Those who participated in the study, filled in a self-administered questionnaire that includes date of birth and date of the first menstrual period.We chose only girls who were between 18 and 24 years of age, (born between 1977 -1983).For comparison, we also chose women above 40 years of age born before 1960, to find out if there is any Ammari in collecting the data.