Survey study, 2024
What symptoms and life factors are most closely linked to PMS in young women?
Anxiety showed up as the symptom most tightly connected to everything else in PMS, closely tied to low mood, and PMS was also linked to a history of painful periods and a neurotic personality type. This comes from one pattern-mapping study, not a trial, so it cannot prove what causes what.
What they did
A cross-sectional study of 3458 young adult women in mainland China. Everyone filled in the Premenstrual Syndrome Scale (a score over 6 meant 'PMS group') plus questionnaires on demographic, physical, psychological and social factors. The researchers used network analysis, a method that maps how symptoms and factors connect to and influence each other, rather than a simple yes/no test.
What they found
1479 of the 3458 women were classed as having PMS. Anxiety had the strongest connections to other symptoms (centrality 1.12 and 1.09 in the two networks looked at). Swelling of hands or feet was also strongly connected (0.89) within the PMS group. The strongest single links were between neurotic personality and depressed mood/nervousness (0.27/0.23), and between a history of painful periods and abdominal bloating (0.21).
What it means for you
Anxiety seems to sit at the centre of the PMS symptom web, so treatments aimed at anxiety might ease other symptoms too. But this is a snapshot in time, so it cannot show whether anxiety causes other symptoms or the other way round. Everything was self-reported, which can introduce recall bias, and the connections between factors and symptoms were fairly weak overall.
1479/3458
Women with PMS out of total studied
1.12/1.09
Anxiety centrality score
0.21
Dysmenorrhea-bloating link strength
About the study
- Original title
- Network structure of complex interactions of premenstrual syndrome and influencing factors in young adult women
- Authors
- Qin R, Mao C, Li G et al.
- Journal
- Journal of affective disorders
- Year
- 2024
- Study design
- Survey study
- Participants
- 3,458
- What was tested
- None tested; this was an observational mapping of PMS symptoms and related factors
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2024.03.030
Topics
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