Announcing the publication of our first scientific research paper.
The paper is a review of the previous research about the Late Reproductive Stage (LRS) — the time before we skip periods and have cycle changes that vary more than 7 days — basically when we are said to be still “regular”.
What we learned: Not much research has focused on the Late Reproductive Stage.
This lack of research (“research gap”) is why we conducted the 2020 WLB Survey to better understand the symptom experience of those in the Late Reproductive Stage and the Menopausal Transition (aka perimenopause). Many of you participated in this research that was designed to help fill this research gap.
The team behind this work is Dr. Nancy Woods, Dr. Marcie Richardson and Nina Coslov, WLB co-founder.
The Backstory
When I, Nina, first connected with Dr. Marcie Richardson, I shared my belief that more attention needed to be paid to what many women experience before a skipped period or dramatic changes to cycle length (i.e. more than 7 days between consecutive cycles).
As a GYN who had been supporting women in the menopause transition for over 25 years, I so appreciated her openness to the idea that there might be missing information. She reached out to Dr. Nancy Woods, a prolific midlife women’s health researcher and she joined our next conversation. I told them both about my goal of a big data collection effort via an online survey. From what I’d learned from this WLB community, many women were suffering and I believed they would be willing to share.
Dr. Woods too was open to this idea that there might be missing information but suggested a first look at what research had been done about this “stage” called the Late Reproductive Stage — the LRS as we’ve affectionately come to call it. She suggested a scoping review.
I am so grateful to be collaborating with these two brilliant and amazing women.
The Paper
This first paper from our collaboration Transitioning to the menopausal transition: a scoping review of research on the late reproductive stage in reproductive aging was published in the journal of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS). You can find the paper on the Menopause site here.
And for those that want a 5-minute video summary of the paper, click the image below:
Update: We conttinue to focus on creatting a beter understtanding of the Late Reproductive Stage through our research collaboratiton. You can find all that we’ve accomplished so far here.
