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. 2022 Jul 22:3:896924.
doi: 10.3389/fgwh.2022.896924. eCollection 2022.

Affective Risk Associated With Menstrual Cycle Symptom Change

Jeff Kiesner  1 , Tory A Eisenlohr-Moul  2 , Giulio Vidotto  3
Affiliations

Affective Risk Associated With Menstrual Cycle Symptom Change

Jeff Kiesner et al. Front Glob Womens Health. .

Abstract

In the present study we test whether cyclical changes in affective symptoms of the menstrual cycle are associated with higher mean levels of those same symptoms. Using prospective daily reports across two full menstrual cycles, from two samples of female University students (n = 213; n = 163), we applied both quartic polynomial regressions and cosine regressions to model cyclical change in symptoms, and to test for mean-level differences in symptoms across the resulting trajectory patterns. Counter to prior findings, but consistent with theoretical expectations, these results show that females who experience menstrual cycle-related changes in affect (whether a perimenstrual or mid-cycle increase) are at risk for higher average levels of affective symptoms. These results suggest that the mid-cycle group should be recognized as a target for future research that is associated with increased risk for chronic negative affective symptoms.

Keywords: affective disorders; anxiety; depression; menstrual cycle; risk; women.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Trajectory of daily depression/anxiety scores across two menstrual cycles, plotted separately for the four trajectory groups, the two analytic techniques, and the two separate samples. “Depression/Anxiety” is the daily mean of the depression and anxiety scales, which are the means of individual questionnaire items. Top left plot showing polynomial regressions for sample 1, is used with permission (9).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Box and contour plots, with group cut-off scores, for the cosine regression coefficients, presented separately for the two samples.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Polynomial regression lines of the individuals' average level of depression/anxiety regressed on their individual cosine coefficient, presented separately for the two samples. “Depression/Anxiety” is the individual-level mean across two menstrual cycles on the Depression/Anxiety scale, which is the mean of the depression and anxiety scales, which are the means of individual questionnaire items.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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