Author(s)

María-Raquel Huerta-Franco^1*, Francisco-Miguel Vargas-Luna², Elba del Rosario Huerta-Franco³, Aminta Jimenez-Velazquez⁴, Marco Balleza², Isabel Delgadillo-Holford²

¹pplied Sciences to Work Department, Division of Health Sciences, Campus Leon, University of Guanajuato, León, Mexico.
²Engineering Physics Department, Division of Science and Engineering, Campus Leon, University of Guanajuato, León, Mexico.
³Dentistry Clinic of the University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico.
⁴Institute for Social Security and Services for the State Workers from Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico.

Objective: To investigate the age at menarche, pubarche and telarche in a representative sample of residents of an urban zone of Leon, Guanajuato, Central Mexico and to evaluate the secular change of the age at menarche between 1985 and 2000. Methods: Using status quo and retrospective methods, menarcheal, pubarcheal and telarcheal status of girls 8 - 17 years of age (n = 1093) were determined. Multiple regression analysis and logistic regression were used to determine factors that were related to or predictive of age at menarche. Results: Median ages for menarche, pubarche and telarche in our studied sample were: 11.9 ± 0.04; 11.13 ± 1.25 and 10.84 ± 1.34 years, respectively. A direct correlation was found between the age of menarche of adolescents and that of their mother (p < 0.001) and sisters (p < 0.001), in addition to the girls’ waist circumference (p = 0.001), but an indirect correlation was found with the girls’ hip circumference (p = 0.004). We demonstrated a clear secular tendency towards an earlier onset of menarche by comparing our results (11.9 ± 0.04) with data from 1985 (12.8 ± 1.3) for adolescents from the same city. Conclusion: We demonstrated a clear reduction in age at menarche of approximately 0.75 year/decade, higher than Tanner’s finding in 1962, but similar than that of Malina et al. in 2004.

Age at Menarche, Adolescent Girls, Secular Tendency

Huerta-Franco, M. , Vargas-Luna, F. , Huerta-Franco, E. , Jimenez-Velazquez, A. , Balleza, M. and Delgadillo-Holford, I. (2015) The Secular Tendency of the Age at Menarche in a Representative Sample of Mexican Girls from an Urban Zone in Central Mexico. Food and Nutrition Sciences, 6, 1362-1370. doi: 10.4236/fns.2015.615142.