ASSOCIATION OF MENSTRUAL FUNCTION WITH BONE MINERAL DENSITY AMONGST PUNJABI UNIVERSITY FEMALE ATHLETES

Abstract

Background: Menstruation being an inevitable part of a girl’s life and more so, an important indicator of normal physical, physiological and functional well-being. Female athlete who engages in high-intensity exercise is at risk as a consequence of the hormonal change, which results in menstrual dysfunction, subsequently; the athlete is at risk for compromised skeletal integrity. The objective of the study is to find the prevalence of menstrual dysfunction among female athletes of Punjabi University, Patiala, to assess the bone mineral density in female athletes and to examine the relationship of Bone Mineral Density with Menstrual dysfunction in female athletes.
Methods: The present study evaluated the menstrual status and its association with Bone Mineral Density in 76 adolescent female athletes. Convenient random sampling was adopted to recruit athletes by inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Result: The percentile analysis of menstrual dysfunction is found to be 59.3% Out of 59.3% population with menstrual dysfunction, 55.5 % have oligomenorrhea, 28.9% have amenorrhea, and 15.5% have polymenorrhea. In this study population, the mean age of menarche is 13.81. Out of 76 female athletes, 35 have normal BMD ranges whereas 41 are having lower BMD ranges. The association of bone mineral density was found to be non-significant with both stress fracture (X2 = 4.38, p= 0.3570), and epimenorrhea (X2 = 4.49, p = 0.3437). The analysis of Pearson's correlation coefficient (r) suggested a negative association between menstrual function with Bone Mineral Density (-0.06292 at 0.05 levels). The result found to be statistically non-significant; therefore, any change in menstrual function is not associated with Bone mineral density.
Conclusion: Common menstrual dysfunctions reported were: oligomenorrhea, polymenorrhea, amenorrhea, and amenorrhea. However, pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS) and dysmenorrhea were specifically found to be very high in prevalence i.e. 94.7% and 92.1% respectively. This dysfunction may be related to the intensity of training and body’s physiological response to it.