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Letter

Nature Genetics 41, 724–728 (1 June 2009) | doi:10.1038/ng.385

Genome-wide association studies identify loci associated with age at menarche and age at natural menopause

Chunyan He , Peter Kraft , Constance Chen , Julie E Buring , Guillaume Par|[eacute]| , Susan E Hankinson , Stephen J Chanock , Paul M Ridker , David J Hunter & Daniel I Chasman

Age at menarche and age at natural menopause are associated with causes of substantial morbidity and mortality such as breast cancer and cardiovascular disease. We conducted a joint analysis of two genome-wide association studies of these two traits in a total of 17,438 women from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS, N = 2,287) and the Women's Genome Health Study (WGHS, N = 15,151).