Levels of a certain hormone could predict or detect bone loss in premenopausal women

Physicians could possibly decide if menopause-related bone loss is already in progress or about to start by measuring the extent of a hormone that declines as ladies strategy their remaining menstrual interval, new UCLA analysis finds.

The findings might assist physicians decide when, and the way, to deal with bone loss in ladies as they age earlier than that bone loss causes vital well being points, in keeping with the examine. Particularly, the examine discovered that for girls 42 and older who usually are not but postmenopausal, ranges of anti-Mullerian hormone, or AMH, can be utilized to find out if they’re experiencing, or about to expertise, bone loss associated to their transition into menopause.

The findings shall be printed April 4 within the peer-reviewed Journal of Bone and Mineral Analysis.

“To have the ability to intervene and scale back the speed and quantity of bone loss, we have to know if this loss is imminent or already ongoing,” stated the examine’s lead creator, Dr. Arun Karlamangla, a professor of drugs within the division of geriatrics on the David Geffen College of Medication at UCLA. “We don’t reliably know earlier than it really occurs when a lady’s final menstrual interval shall be, so we can not inform whether or not it’s time to do one thing about bone loss.”

Bone loss sometimes begins a couple of yr earlier than a lady’s final menstrual interval, Karlamangla stated.

Girls expertise vital bone loss throughout the menopause transition, a roughly three-year window that brackets the ultimate menstrual interval and is accompanied by different signs akin to irregular menstrual cycles, sizzling flashes, and temper and sleep problems. Ranges of the AMH decline as a lady’s remaining menstrual interval attracts nearer.

The researchers examined knowledge from the Research of Girls’s Well being Throughout the Nation, or SWAN, a multisite, multi-ethnic examine inspecting the modifications ladies bear throughout the transition to menopause.

They discovered that 17% of premenopausal ladies age 42 or older can have misplaced a big fraction of their peak bone mass inside two to a few years of the date a doctor makes the prediction. However amongst these with lower than 50 picograms of AMH per milliliter of blood, almost double the share, 33%, can have misplaced a big fraction of peak bone mass in the identical timeframe. (A picogram is one-trillionth of a gram.)

As well as, 42% of ladies in early perimenopause—which means that they’ve irregular menstrual bleeding however with not more than a three-month hole between durations—can have misplaced a big fraction of peak bone mass inside two to a few years. However amongst ladies in early perimenopause with AMH ranges beneath 25 pg/mL, 65% can have misplaced a big share of peak bone mass in that point.

The examine has some limitations, the researchers word. The findings can’t be utilized to ladies who’re already taking osteoporosis drugs, have undergone a hysterectomy previous to their remaining interval, or have used exogenous intercourse hormones throughout the transition to menopause; and the examine didn’t embrace Hispanic ladies, nor did it embrace ladies who turned menopausal earlier than age 42.

“These findings make possible the designing and testing of midlife interventions to forestall or delay osteoporosis in ladies,” the examine’s authors write.

The examine’s co-authors are Dr. Albert Shieh and Dr. Gail Greendale of UCLA; Dr. Elaine Yu, Dr. Sherri-Ann Burnett-Bowie, Dr. Patrick Sluss and Dr. Joel Finkelstein of Harvard College; Deborah Martin of the College of Pittsburgh; and Anthony Morrison of Motive Biosciences.