[Differential fertility and body constitution of fertile and postmenopausal women from Austria].

With 156 fertile and 171 postmenopausal patients of the I. Universitäts-Frauenklinik in Vienna the intercorrelations between 29 cephalic and postcephalic body measures, 34 anthropometric indices and number and date of pregnancies, spontaneous abortions as well as births were computed. For both proband groups typical correlation patterns between the two trait systems could be observed. It turned out, that small, robust women with a high amount of subcutaneous fat tissue had more pregnancies and births than tall, slender women with less amount of subcutaneous fat tissue. Differences between the two groups occurred only with regard to the number of significant correlations as well as of the height of the correlation coefficients. With the fertile probands more significant and especially higher correlations were stated. The correlations between the anthropometric characters and the date of the individual pregnancies yielded marked differences between the two samples: the number of significant correlations of the postmenopausal women surpassed the number of significant correlations of the fertile women. Concerning the causes for the intercorrelations between fertility and body dimensions, hormonal factors and somatic changes resulting from pregnancies and births as well as age-dependent changes of body shape are discussed.