Article Text
Abstract
Background Previous studies of childhood psychosocial adversity and age at menarche mostly evaluated single or a few measures of adversity, and therefore could not quantify total psychosocial adversity. Limited knowledge is currently available regarding childhood psychosocial adversity in relation to age at menopause and reproductive lifespan.
Methods We examined the associations of total and specific components of childhood psychosocial adversity with age at menarche (n=8984), age at menopause (n=945), and length of reproductive lifespan (n=841), in mothers participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. We used confirmatory factor analysis to characterise lack of care, maladaptive family functioning, non-sexual abuse, overprotective parenting, parental mental illness and sexual abuse. These specific components of childhood psychosocial adversity were combined into a total psychosocial adversity score using a second-order factor analysis. We used structural equation models to simultaneously conduct the factor analysis and estimate the association with the continuous outcomes of interest.
Results Total childhood psychosocial adversity was not associated with age at menarche, age at menopause or length of reproductive lifespan. When we examined the separate psychosocial adversity constructs, sexual abuse was inversely associated with age at menarche, with a mean difference of −0.17 (95% CI −0.23 to −0.12) years per SD higher factor score, and with age at menopause, with a mean difference of −0.17 (95% CI −0.52 to 0.18) per SD higher factor score.
Conclusion Childhood sexual abuse was associated with lower age at menarche and menopause, but the latter needs to be confirmed in larger samples.
- psychosocial Factors
- reproductive health
- epidemiology
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Footnotes
Contributors MCM and AF designed the study. MCM conducted the analysis and drafted the initial paper. ELA and LH contributed to the quality assurance of statistical methods. CJJ and ISP-V contributed to the interpretation of the results. All authors critically revised the paper.
Funding The UK Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust (102215/2/13/2) and the University of Bristol provide core support for the data collection in ALSPAC. MCM, ELA, LH and AF work at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, which receives infrastructure funding from the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) (MC/UU/12013/5). AF and MCM are funded by a UK MRC fellowship awarded to AF (MR/M009351/1). LH is funded by a UK MRC fellowship (MR/M020894/1). This work was also supported by a grant from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/M010317/1) and the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (R01AG048835).
Competing interests None declared.
Ethics approval Ethical approval for the data collection in ALSPAC was granted by the ALSPAC Law and Ethics Committee and the Local Research Ethics Committees.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement ALSPAC data are available by contacting the executive committee at alspac-exec@bristol.ac.uk.