Hormone profile of menopausal women in Havana

introduction: there is a tendency among women today to delay the age at which they have their first child or subsequent children. this creates a dilemma for couples, since health professionals tend to counsel against pregnancy in women aged >40 years without considering their reproductive potential and their ability to and likelihood of conceiving and carrying to term a healthy newborn at little or no risk. objective: assess hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis function in menopausal women in havana, to evaluate relevance to reproductive potential. methods: a retrospective study was conducted from march 2006 through march 2008 of 230 healthy women aged 40-59 years seen in the menopause and osteoporosis clinic in havana, cuba. chart review yielded data on current age, stage of climacteric and hormone levels expressed in means and standard deviations: serum follicle-stimulating hormone (fsh), luteinizing hormone (lh), estradiol and testosterone. analysis of variance was used for assesment by age group and stage of menopause (eumenorrheic, perimenopausal and postmenopausal), with a p value of <0.05 set as significance level. results: mean serum hormone levels in eumenorrheic women were: fsh 6.97 iu/l, lh 4.23 iu/l and estradiol 314 pmol/l; in perimenopausal women: fsh 34.69 iu/l, lh 20.78 iu/l and estradiol 201 pmol/l; and in postmenopausal women: fsh 75.43 iu/l, lh 37.59 iu/l and estradiol 117 pmol/l (p <0.05 for difference between eumenorrheic and postmenopausal women). there was a progressive increase in fsh and lh and a decline in estradiol with older age. there was no significant difference in testosterone levels by age or stage of menopause. conclusions: menstrual cycle and hormonal levels of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis should be considered in addition to chronological age when determining reproductive potential in women aged 40-59 years.