4 - (SYM 53) An Examination of Adolescent Affective Sensitivity Using Novel Cycle Scaling Methods

Background: Despite accumulating evidence for the presence of affective sensitivity to fluctuations in ovarian steroid hormones across the menstrual cycle in some adult females, this work has yet to be adequately extended to adolescent samples. This is due, in part, to the difficulty of applying current gold-standard approaches to data from adolescent menstrual cycles, which are often irregular, anovulatory, and vary significantly even within-person. A novel method for scaling menstrual cycles and using Generalized Additive Mixed Effects Models (GAMMs) to model fluctuations in hormones and mood across the cycle addresses some of the barriers of older approaches and facilitates the modeling of the effects of within-person changes in hormones on mood in ovulatory adolescent cycles.

Methods: Participants were N=31 adolescents assigned female at birth with ovulatory cycles (M_age=13.2, SD=1.02, < 15 months post-menarche). The sample was drawn from a larger sample of adolescents (N=54) that was assessed daily for one menstrual cycle to evaluate the effects of ovarian steroid hormones on mood and behavior during the pubertal transition. Participants reported on mood symptoms daily using the Daily Record of Severity of Problems (DRSP) and provided dried urine samples daily to assess urinary metabolites of estradiol (estrone-3glucuronide, E1G), progesterone (pregnanediol glucuronide, PdG), luteinizing hormone (LH), and creatinine. Ovulation status was determined following guidelines provided by Klusmann et al (2023). Cycles will be scaled using the menstrualcycleR package in R.

Results: We will report results from GAMMs models evaluating the effect of E1G and PdG on mood symptoms (e.g., depression, irritability, anxiety) at the sample level. We will also present results from Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) evaluating the effect of E1G and PdG on mood symptoms at the individual level.


Conclusion: The current study will demonstrate the use of cycle scaling and GAMMs on data from ovulatory adolescent menstrual cycles and offer a novel method for the analysis of adolescent menstrual cycle data. It will also provide much needed initial evidence for the presence of affective sensitivity to daily changes in ovarian steroids across the cycle in adolescents. These results will bridge a significant gap in the literature and facilitate future research on hormone sensitivity in adolescents.