Grant: Idea to Innovation

Female reproductive hormones, namely estradiol and progesterone, can profoundly influence mood and behaviour in women across the menstrual cycle as well as across various reproductive transitions, such as the perinatal period and menopause transition. However, there are large individual differences in the extent to which women are impacted by hormonal changes. Our team has developed an algorithm aimed at quantifying the extent to which an individual woman is psychologically impacted by shifts in endogenous reproductive hormone levels. Specifically, the individual collects urine samples every other day at home over the course of 2-3 months for the measurement of the urinary metabolites of estradiol and progesterone while completing a brief daily affect questionnaire. An algorithm is then applied to the data to generate a sensitivity coefficient for each hormone, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0. We envision developing a mobile app that would facilitate the application of our algorithm to hormone and daily affect data. There are currently several home urinary hormone assessment kits that are commercially available, marketed as fertility-tracking tools; pairing our app with one of these hormone assessment kits would allow for the creation of an individualized report describing the extent to which a woman is sensitive to estradiol and/or progesterone. This grant would fund market research aimed at investigating the commercialization potential of our proposed mobile app.