Fluid Retention over the Menstrual Cycle: 1-Year Data from the Prospective Ovulation Cohort

Table 1

Demographic and menstrual cycle information for 62 women with daily Menstrual Cycle Diary (MCD) data. Women were screened to be initially ovulatory and healthy. They participated in a one-year prospective study. The women are shown in two groups: normally active women did less than an hour of aerobic activity a week (𝑛=23) and runners include those training for a marathon plus those running for health and fitness (𝑛=39). Data are presented as mean ± SE. Statistical analyses are by 𝑡-test (age, height, weight, BMI, menarche, proportion of anovulatory cycles, and duration of MCD data), Fisher’s exact test for contingency (parity versus exercise), and nested analysis of variance (cycle length, luteal length).

	Normally active	Runner	Statistic	𝑃 value	All women
	𝑛=23	𝑛=39			𝑛=62
Age	35.0±1.19	33.3±0.82	𝑡(60)=1.25	0.216	33.9±0.68
Height (cm)	160.9±1.42	162.7±0.93	𝑡(60)=−1.13	0.264	162.0±0.79
Weight (kg)	59.4±1.72	57.4±0.80	𝑡(60)=1.21	0.230	58.1±0.81
BMI	22.9±0.54	21.6±0.24	𝑡(60)=2.52	0.014	22.1±0.26
Parity (%)	39%±10.4	36%±7.8	𝜒^2(1)=0.065	1.000	37%±6.2
Race
White	21	39
Asian	2 (Chinese, Filipino)	0
Cycle characteristics
Cycle Length (d)	27.6±0.18	28.4±0.15	𝐹(1,60)=0.83	0.37	28.2±0.12
Luteal Length* (d)	10.7±0.13	10.5±0.10	𝐹(1,60)=0.21	0.65	10.6±0.08
% anovulatory	1.7±1.09%	4.5±2.16%	𝑡(60)=−1.22	0.23	3.5±1.42%
Days of MCD data	326.7±24.77	359.5±17.01			347.4±14.13
Cycles of MCD data	11.8±0.93	12.6±0.61			12.3±0.51
% missing fluid scores	4.0%	2.7%			3.2%

*Luteal lengths only for cycles that were ovulatory by QBT.