10
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Modern fertility awareness methods: wrist wearables capture the changes in temperature associated with the menstrual cycle

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Core and peripheral body temperatures are affected by changes in reproductive hormones during the menstrual cycle. Women worldwide use the basal body temperature (BBT) method to aid and prevent conception. However, prior research suggests that taking one’s daily temperature can prove inconvenient and subject to environmental factors. We investigate whether a more automatic, non-invasive temperature measurement system can detect changes in temperature across the menstrual cycle. We examined how wrist skin temperature (WST), measured with wearable sensors, correlates with urinary tests of ovulation and may serve as a new method of fertility tracking. One hundred and thirty-six eumenorrheic, non-pregnant women participated in an observational study. Participants wore WST biosensors during sleep and reported their daily activities. An at-home luteinizing hormone (LH) test was used to confirm ovulation. WST was recorded across 437 cycles (mean cycles/participant = 3.21, S.D. = 2.25). We tested the relationship between the fertile window and WST temperature shifts, using the BBT three-over-six rule. A sustained 3-day temperature shift was observed in 357/437 cycles (82%), with the lowest cycle temperature occurring in the fertile window 41% of the time. Most temporal shifts (307/357, 86%) occurred on ovulation day (OV) or later. The average early-luteal phase temperature was 0.33°C higher than in the fertile window. Menstrual cycle changes in WST were impervious to lifestyle factors, like having sex, alcohol, or eating prior to bed, that, in prior work, have been shown to obfuscate BBT readings. Although currently costlier than BBT, the present study suggests that WST could be a promising, convenient parameter for future multiparameter fertility awareness methods.

          Related collections

          Most cited references57

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          The timing of the "fertile window" in the menstrual cycle: day specific estimates from a prospective study.

          To provide specific estimates of the likely occurrence of the six fertile days (the "fertile window") during the menstrual cycle. Prospective cohort study. 221 healthy women who were planning a pregnancy. The timing of ovulation in 696 menstrual cycles, estimated using urinary metabolites of oestrogen and progesterone. The fertile window occurred during a broad range of days in the menstrual cycle. On every day between days 6 and 21, women had at minimum a 10% probability of being in their fertile window. Women cannot predict a sporadic late ovulation; 4-6% of women whose cycles had not yet resumed were potentially fertile in the fifth week of their cycle. In only about 30% of women is the fertile window entirely within the days of the menstrual cycle identified by clinical guidelines-that is, between days 10 and 17. Most women reach their fertile window earlier and others much later. Women should be advised that the timing of their fertile window can be highly unpredictable, even if their cycles are usually regular.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            The dependence of onset and duration of sleep on th circadian rhythm of rectal temperature.

            The sleep-wake cycle and the circadian rhythm of rectal temperature were recorded in subjects who lived singly in an isolation unit. In 10 subjects, the freerunning rhythms remained internally synchronized, 10 other subjects showed internal desynchronization. Times of onset and end of bedrest ("sleep") were determined in each cycle and referred to the phase of the temperature rhythm. In the synchronized subjects, onset of sleep occurred, on the average, 1.34 h before the minimum of temperature, and end of sleep 6.94 h thereafter, with narrow distributions. The desynchronized subjects had a broad bimodal distribution of sleep onsets (peaks 6.3 and 1.3 h before the minimum); the duration of sleep varied between more than 15 h when sleep began about 10 h before the temperature minimum, and less than 4 h when sleep began several hours after the minimum. The dependence of sleep duration on body temperature is interpreted as a continuing action of the coupling forces between the two rhythms after mutual synchronization is lost.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Alteration of internal circadian phase relationships after morning versus evening carbohydrate-rich meals in humans.

              The effects of a single morning and evening carbohydrate-rich meal for 3 consecutive days on circadian phase of core body temperature (CBT), heart rate, and salivary melatonin rhythms were compared under controlled constant routine conditions. In 10 healthy young men entrained to a natural light-dark cycle with regular sleep timing, CBT and heart rate were significantly elevated for approximately 8 h after the last evening carbohydrate-rich meal (EM), and nocturnal melatonin secretion (as measured by salivary melatonin and urinary 6-sulphatoxymelatonin levels) was reduced, compared to the morning carbohydrate-rich meal (MM) condition. Thus, circadian phase could not be measured until the following day due to this acute masking effect. The day after the last meal intervention, MM showed a significant advanced circadian phase position in CBT (+59+/-12 min) and heart rate (+43+/-18 min) compared to EM. However, dim-light melatonin onset was not significantly changed (+15+/-13 min). The results are discussed with respect to central (light-entrainable) and peripheral (food-entrainable) oscillators. Food may be a zeitgeber in humans for the food-entrainable peripheral oscillators, but melatonin data do not support such a conclusion for the light-entrainable oscillator in the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Biosci Rep
                Biosci. Rep
                ppbioscirep
                BSR
                Bioscience Reports
                Portland Press Ltd.
                0144-8463
                1573-4935
                24 November 2017
                21 December 2018
                30 November 2018
                : 38
                : 6
                : BSR20171279
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Clinic for Reproductive Endocrinology, University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland
                [2 ]Ava AG, Zurich, Switzerland
                Author notes
                Correspondence: Brigitte Leeners ( Brigitte.Leeners@ 123456usz.ch )
                [*]

                These authors contributed equally to this work.

                Article
                10.1042/BSR20171279
                6265623
                29175999
                6e6a152f-ff07-4399-ad97-1c0d96b3394e
                © 2018 The Author(s).

                This is an open access article published by Portland Press Limited on behalf of the Biochemical Society and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).

                History
                : 18 September 2017
                : 20 November 2017
                : 22 November 2017
                Page count
                Pages: 12
                Categories
                Research Articles
                Research Article
                10
                50
                52
                58

                Life sciences
                basal body temperature,fertility awareness methods,menstrual cycle,wrist skin temperature

                Comments

                Comment on this article