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ROME — A simple blood test can give an accurate pointer of when a
woman will hit the menopause, according to research to be presented at
a fertility conference here on Monday.

If confirmed by other
scientists, the test devised by Iranian doctors would be a boon for
women seeking to plan when to start a family, the European Society of
Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) said in a press release on
Sunday.

The test is based on levels of so-called anti-Mullerian
hormone (AMH), which controls the development of egg-making cells in
the ovary.

A team led by Fahimeh Ramezani Tehrani, a professor at
the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, took
blood samples at three yearly intervals among 266 women aged 20 to 49
who were enrolled in a different project launched in 1998.

The women also had physical examinations every three years.

The
investigators developed a statistical model that looked at changes in
AMH levels and predicted when menopause would take effect.

Sixty-three
of the women reached menopause during the study's duration, and the
predictions were extremely accurate, Ramezani Tehrani said.

"The
average difference between the predicted age at menopause using our
model and the women's actual age was only a third of a year," she said.

The maximum margin of error was... >>>