Resumen

PRADO, Consuelo et al. Reproductive cycle and anthropology in female groups subjected to different environmental pressures. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2005, vol.31, n.2. ISSN 0864-3466.

The objective of this paper is to study and compare three female groups subjected to different environmental pressures both at the socio-economic development level and the way of life and feeding. The analyzed sample makes reference to three subpopulations: urban populations like those living in Madrid and in the City of Havana that differentiate in terms of living conditions and that would represent two meso-environmental stress situations, and a rural population represented by Mexican women from Tuxpan, Michoacán. The research works performed simultaneously following the same methodology analyzed over 1 600 women aged 40 to 60 years. Their reproductive cycle, menarche, menopause and frequent symptoms associated with menopause were examined. The analyzed socio-demographic variables were education, work status, incomes and housing conditions in the case of the rural women. The age at menarche as well as the age at menopause is confirmed as a sensitive feature to the meso-environmental situation where females grow, thus menarche and menopause in Mexican women occur later and earlier respectively, which confirms shorter reproductive cycles whereas the conditions of the middle class women in Madrid support a longer useful reproductive period. As previous studies carried out by the Havana team have pointed out, the symptomatology associated to menopause is varied and should be conceptualized for each population; for example, the most referred symptom worldwide is hot flash which, in the present study, has very different prevalence rates in each analyzed population ranging from 85,7% in Havana female population to 31,6% in Tuxpan female population

Palabras clave : MENOPAUSE; MEXICO; CUBA; SPAIN; MESO-ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS; BODY COMPOSITION.