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The blood test measures levels of a hormone called anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH), which is produced by the cells in women's ovaries and is a marker for ovarian function. The test could tell women as young as 20 when they would enter menopause. Sixty-three women reached menopause during the course of the study, and the test was able in most cases to predict the age within about four months of the woman's actual age; the maximum margin of error was between three and four years.
Study author Fahimeh Ramezani Tehrani, president of the Reproductive Endocrinology Department of the Endocrine Research Centre and a faculty member and associate professor of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran, reported her findings at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Rome.
The findings could have implications on how women approach family planning. Researchers said it is one of the first population-based studies to provide a statistical model for predicting age at menopause.
"We developed a statistical model for estimating the age at menopause from a single measurement of AMH concentration in serum from blood samples," Ramezani Tehrani says. "Using this model, we estimated mean average ages at menopause for women at different time points in their reproductive life span from varying levels of serum AMH concentration. We were able to show that there was a good level of agreement between ages at menopause estimated by our model and the actual age at menopause for a subgroup of 63 women who reached menopause during the study."
Ramezani Tehrani says more studies are needed to validate these findings, but the blood test could be an important diagnostic tool to evaluate one's reproductive life and could provide a more accurate response than chronological age.
Source: News release, European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology 26th Annual Meeting, Rome, June 27-30, 2010.