key: cord-1009529-sqt3n0s9
authors: Prado, Raul Cosme Ramos; Silveira, Rodrigo; Asano, Ricardo Yukio
title: SARS‐CoV‐2 (COVID‐19) pandemic and a possible impact in the future of menstrual cycle research
date: 2021-05-03
journal: Health Sci Rep
DOI: 10.1002/hsr2.276
sha: baffe75394359ef2273d20dd7b7e34b7a024f62e
doc_id: 1009529
cord_uid: sqt3n0s9

nan

data from a recent study with 124 648 women, from which 612 613 showed regular cycles of 29.3 ± 5.2 days. 4 The female human menstrual cycle (MC) can be classified into general (ie, follicular and luteal) or sub-phases (eg, menses, early-tolate follicular, ovulatory, mid-to-late-luteal) based on sexual hormones fluctuation (ie, progesterone and estrogen). MC is orchestrated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian (HPO) axis through a positive and negative feedback loop of hormones on these structures. 5 The MC is a biological event that fills a large share of scientific studies, including animals 1-3 and humans. 4, 6, 7 Human's MC investigators describe that monitoring/identifying specific MC phases are among the oldest challenges in this field. 8, 9 Methods as: retrospective or prospective self-report; hormone dosage; basal body temperature control and other strategies compete between accuracy vs cost to identify the MC phase. For example, self-report methods have a lower cost but they offer worse accuracy (mainly in the middle-end of the cycle), in contrast, sonography has an excellent accuracy but is accompanied by the high cost. 9 Independent of the method used to investigate the MC, it is clear (with exceptions) that eumenorrheic (regular) MC is necessary to control the study, in which variations in its length can reduce the identification accuracy of a specific phase of the cycle. As a consequence, the internal success of the research can be impaired. Therefore, researchers need to be aware of any unforeseen changes in women's life that could make the MC unpredictable, besides controlling their experimental designs.

A new year came but, with it, we are experiencing one of the greatest pandemics of history, with the sad mark of approximately 117 million infected people and more than 2.6 million deaths caused by complications of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) until March 11, 2021. 10 With these alarming numbers, several studies [11] [12] [13] have been published showing changes in people's behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, women have reported significantly higher stress, anxiety, and depression compared to men. 11, 13 A cohort (1994 to 2014) and multicentric (30 countries) study 14 showed that negative psychological responses are prevalent in women. These findings, combined with COVID-19 studies, 11, 13 reinforce the idea that negative psychological changes have been exacerbated during the pandemic, mainly for women.

It has been supported that extrinsic factors can cause irregularities in the length of MC. According to previous studies, HPO is sensible to stressors (eg, inadequate sleep, level of psychological and

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