Irregular periods for teens could be an early indicator of trouble

Teenage girls with irregular periods are more likely to be overweight and obese and have early warning signs for diabetes and heart disease that should not be ignored or dismissed as simply a typical experience for youth.

In older women, these events are taken seriously as a warning of health risk. That is association between irregular menstrual cycle, heart disease and diabetes.

“There may be a misconception in adolescent medicine. . . that ‘it takes a couple of years after menarche to get the engine running’ and hence one might not want tot be concerned about irregular adolescent menstrual cycles until much later,” aid Dr. Charles Glueck, one of the study’s authors. “That’s clearly wrong.”

An irregular cycle is defined as 42 days passing from start of one period to the start of the next. The report, published in Fertility and Sterility, showed that the 14 year olds with irregular periods were already on the heavy side, continuing to gain weight through the study. These girls also had higher levels of testosterone. By the time the girls with the most irregular periods were 25 years old, they were obese. They also had higher blood sugar and insulin.

They don’t say the irregular periods cause these symptoms or vice versa, only that they are a package which needs to be taken seriously, now not later. “These relationships which we see so clearly in adolescence and see prospectively into young adulthood are the same relationships which two to three decades later spell out in the development of cardiovascular disease (heart attack), and type II diabetes,” Glueck concluded.

Irregular periods could also be a sign of PCOS, a contributor to infertility. Early detection could lead to successful intervention.

Source: Fertility and Sterility, Reuters