Down syndrome and precocious menopause

To determine whether women who had children with Down syndrome (DS) had precocious menopause.

We selected 104 mothers of children with DS and 121 normal women who had children with no genetic problems. We conducted an interview and compared their mean age at menopause.

We did not detect a statistically significant difference in mean age at menopause. When we stratified into women who had conceived when younger or older than 35 years of age, we found a statistically significant difference only for women who had conceived at the age of 35 years or older. We observed three cases of previous unilateral ovarian surgery in the study group and one case in the control group.

We cannot conclude that mothers of children with DS will have precocious menopause. Nevertheless, our findings do not exclude the theory of reduced ovarian reserve as a primordial factor in the genesis of DS.