RESEARCHERS have found that men are just as prone as women to the mood changes, loss of concentration and unpredictable behaviour that is usually associated with pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS).
The study found that men experience similar psychological cycles with the same regularity as women.
As a result, researchers believe that the concept of PMS may be mistaken. The changing level of hormones associated with the menstrual cycle may not be responsible for sometimes debilitating changes in the way women feel and behave.
Instead, either a yet-to-be identified infection or a natural mental cycle may be to blame.
Full details of the research are to be unveiled by Dr Aimee Aubeeluck, a psychologist at the University of Derby, next month. She studied 50 men and 50 women who answered questions over a month about symptoms such as pain, loss of concentration and mood and behavioural changes.
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She found that all the symptoms reported by women and associated by them with PMS were also reported by the men — often to a greater extent.
Aubeeluck will tell a British Psychological Society conference that it is possible that women do not suffer from PMS at all and that their symptoms have been wrongly linked to their periods.
When such symptoms do occur — in men or women — they may be caused by a different and unknown condition, such as an infection.
Aubeeluck believes the discovery could help people suffering from such cyclical conditions reach a more accurate diagnosis, allowing women to avoid being stereotyped as PMS sufferers and enabling men to get treatment too.
A better understanding of the condition will be welcomed by many — although probably not the drug industry which makes billions of pounds in sales of drugs to relieve its symptoms.
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Whatever the cause, the symptoms ascribed to PMS are debilitating. The National Association for Premenstrual Syndrome estimates that about 9m women in Britain suffer from them.