Lifestyle and prevalence of dysmenorrhea among Spanish female university students

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of primary dysmenorrhea in a sample of Spanish university students, and to describe their menstrual characteristics, lifestyle habits and associated risk factors. This cross-sectional study was conducted with a total of 258 young female university students recruited from the Ciudad Real Faculty of Nursing, with a mean age of 20.63 +/- 3.32 years. An anonymous self-report questionnaire was used to collect data from students. This included sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyle habits, gynecological personal history and the severity of pain using the visual analogue scale. The statistical analysis of the data included calculation of the mean, percentages, chi-square analysis of the data and logistic regression. The prevalence of dysmenorrhea was of 74.8% (n=193) with a mean pain severity of 6.88 (+/- 1.71). Our results show that 38.3% of students described their menstrual pain as severe and 58% as moderate. The bivariate analysis showed statistically significant differences between students with and without dysmenorrhea: a higher proportion of women with dysmenorrhea had a greater duration of the menstruation flow (p=.003), a longer duration of the menstrual cycle (p=.046), were not using the oral contraceptive pill (p=.026) and had a family history of dysmenorrhea (p=.001). Backward step-wise binary logistic regression analysis using all the significant bivariate variables including lifestyle variables revealed the following risk factors: drinking cola drinks, duration of the menstrual flow, eating meat and having a first-degree relative affected by dysmenorrhea.