Within‐family intergenerational trends in age at menarche relative to political changes in Czechoslovakia after World War II

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Authors

SEKAJOVÁ Zuzana LICZBINSKA Grazyna KRÁLÍK Miroslav ČUTA Martin INGROVÁ Pavlína

Year of publication 2022
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source American Journal of Human Biology
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Science

Citation
Web web
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23588
Keywords secular trend; political transformations; age at menarche; prenatal development
Attached files
Description Objectives: The aim of the study was to examine a secular trend in age at menarche (AAM) in former Czechoslovak (and descendant Slovak and Czech) population in relation to its large-scale political and social events taking place after WWII. Methods: The study included 211 women aged 18–30 (born during 1984–1998), and their relatives: mothers, sisters and grandmothers, yielding a total of 421 women. Changes in retrospectively recalled AAM between the three generations of women (oldest – grandmothers, middle – mothers and youngest – daughters) were studied in pairwise comparisons. Relationships between AAM and the birth/conception date were analysed relative to three events in the post-WWII Czechoslovakia (1948, 1968 and 1989). Results: AAM was the highest in the oldest generation, slightly lower in the middle generation and the lowest in the youngest generation. Mixed-Effect Model showed statistically significant interaction between the date of conception, historical events and the period before and after the event. Conclusions: The recorded decline in AAM is congruent with secular trends reported in the literature. However, the decreasing trend was not linear and included an increase in AAM in women conceived within the five-year period after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by communist armies in 1968.
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