Background & Objectives: Lots of variation has been observed in menopausal age among women the world over, what ever being the reasons. Present study was aimed to determine the age at onset of natural menopause in working Punjabi women of Jalandhar and compare it with other Indian populations.
Methods: 620 Punjabi working women were randomly selected and personally interviewed. A questionnaire was designed to note down the age at menarche, age at menopause, weight and height and other details. The age at menopause and menarche of each subject was obtained by retrospective method, whereas, height and weight were taken with standardized methods. Median menarcheal and menopausal age was determined by probit analysis, whereas, mean ages were computed by student’s t-test. Three thirty premenopausal women, 16 perimenopausal women and 9 women, who had undergone hysterectomy, were excluded from the study. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was computed to assess the association between menopausal age and BMI and age at menarche.
Results: The mean and median age at menopause in the present sample was observed as 46.55±4.50 and 46.06±4.85 years, respectively. Similarly, mean and median age at menarche was observed as 13.96±1.21and 13.98±4.68 years, respectively. No association was observed between age at menopause and BMI and age at menarche. Menopausal age of the present sample occurred earlier than other Punjabi populations.
Conclusions: Lesser menopausal age among working women of Jalandhar may be due to work stress or poor eating habits. A thorough study is needed to evaluate the factors affecting age at menopause. Age at menopause has no association with BMI and age at menarche.