About the Study

Women face a higher risk than men for many age-related chronic diseases including cardiometabolic and respiratory conditions. There are also sex differences in the prevalence of other markers of poor health such as muscle weakness and cognitive impairment.

Early interventions may be more effective and have greater long-term health benefits. But, this approach is hindered by the lack of evidence on reproductive risk factors for women in their 5th decade of life.

Research to date has mainly focused on the risks for older and postmenopausal women who have already gone through the dramatic physiological and hormonal changes of the menopause transition. before menopause women go through more gradual hormonal and physiological changes, interspersed with short periods of dramatic changes during pregnancy. The links between reproductive factors and risks of poor health faced by women in their 5th decade of life remains largely unknown. Other studies have also overlooked potential common cause factors, such as birth weight, childhood environment, and adult body size that may influence both reproductive outcomes and health risk.

The Menarche to Pre-Menopause substudy aims to determine how reproductive history influences chronic disease risk and health outcomes in Australian women in their 5th decade of life.

The Menarche-to-PreMenopause (M-PreM) project is a substudy of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH). It is funded by an NHMRC Project Grant (APP1129592).