Papers Citing menstrualcycleR & PACTS

Uses PACTS as its primary timing method on a non-affective behavioural outcome. Naturally cycling individuals with diagnosed or suspected premenstrual disorders were followed prospectively for two to three cycles, giving daily ratings of cannabis use alongside the Daily Record of Severity of Problems. Per the abstract, "the novel phase-aligned cycle time scaling (PACTS) method was used to generate a continuous, phase-aligned cycle-time variable anchored to both menses onset and ovulation, and associations were modeled using generalized additive mixed models"; daily quantity of dried cannabis flower showed menstrual cyclicity. The clearest external uptake of the method so far - dual-anchored, continuous and GAMM-modelled exactly as prescribed, applied to substance use rather than mood. ANNOTATION FROM ABSTRACT ONLY: the publisher blocks automated full-text access, so the in-text citation context was not read; the Methods Application classification rests on the abstract's own explicit statement above.

A PRISMA-ScR scoping review of consumer menstrual-cycle technologies that record physiological biomarkers of ovulation, searching Embase, PubMed and Scopus to synthesise evidence on their clinical validity for health care professionals. PROVISIONAL CLASSIFICATION: the full text is paywalled and the in-text citation context was NOT read. The reasonable but unverified reading is that PACTS is cited for how cycle time should be represented once ovulation can be detected directly; the alternative is that it is only a background reference. Needs an eye on the PDF to settle.

Narrative review synthesizing evidence on menstrual-cycle hormonal fluctuations and athletic performance/injury risk, concluding that phase-performance associations are generally weak, task-specific, and highly individual. Cites the target in support of the argument that cycle effects are heterogeneous across individuals and require analytic approaches that model that variability rather than assuming a uniform phase effect. An endorsing/background citation; the review runs no analyses of its own.

Protocol for the ISSAC study, an EMA design following 80 individuals (spanning no/mild premenstrual symptoms to PMDD) across two consecutive cycles, pairing momentary and daily stress and DSM-5 PMDD-criterion symptoms with salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase. Cites the target as the methodological rationale for characterizing premenstrual symptoms continuously across the cycle rather than by phase contrast. As a protocol, no cycle-time analysis has been run yet, so it references rather than applies the approach.

Expert-consensus practical guide for developmental scientists on measuring and modeling puberty longitudinally, covering pubertal tempo, measurement choices, and statistical-modeling strategies, with an accompanying code/resource list. Cites the target among recommended analytic approaches for handling cyclical/longitudinal hormone-behavior data. Cited within best-practice guidance rather than applied.

Introduces a method that decomposes digital-phenotype dynamics (smartphone typing behavior from the BiAffect platform) into latent individual trajectories, then uses each participant's trajectory membership as a moderator when modeling psychopathology across the menstrual cycle. Applied to mood-symptom exacerbation, it identifies a subgroup with substantial cycle-linked movement-rate fluctuation who also show greater cyclical change in prospective anhedonia and depression ratings, but not anxiety, irritability, or suicidal ideation. Builds directly on the target's continuous, individual-differences approach to cycle-time modeling, extending it from self-reported symptoms to passively sensed behavior. (HOW-it-cites provisional pending full text.)

This transdiagnostic study of 142 psychiatric patients recruited for recent suicidality paired intensive daily self-reports with Oura wearable sleep data across 1–3 menstrual cycles. It applies the target method directly — aligning cycle timing to ovulation and menses with Phase-Aligned Cycle Time Scaling (PACTS) and fitting generalized additive mixed models to quantify both the average cyclical effect and interindividual heterogeneity in sleep. Smooth-mixture modeling then recovered latent subgroups whose sleep trajectories (e.g., perimenstrual/luteal worsening) frequently aligned with affective, suicidal-ideation, and pain trajectories, indicating temporally coupled windows of psychiatric risk. A canonical PACTS application, from the method's own group.

A prospective daily-diary study following two menstrual cycles in individuals with retrospectively-reported premenstrual disorders, comparing those whose PMD was prospectively confirmed against those whose was not, and testing cyclicity of suicidal ideation and self-harm with generalized additive mixed models. The authors explicitly used phase-aligned cycle time scaling (PACTS) to align daily observations continuously across the cycle, and found suicidal/self-harm ideation peaked in the late luteal phase and re-emerged around ovulation, with cyclicity significant only in those above the PMD diagnostic threshold. This is a direct application of PACTS extended to a new outcome domain: suicidality and self-harm in premenstrual disorders.

VERIFIED FROM FULL TEXT. Introduces 'cyclepoint', a standardized non-linear approach to placing observations in cycle time without dividing the cycle into phases, validated against hormonal, behavioural and multimodal neuroimaging data and released as an open-source toolkit. It cites the target as CONVERGENT EVIDENCE, not as a rival: "Recent work comparing a similar scaled approach to more traditional methods across 44 cycles found reduced variance in within-person hormone measures using the scaled approach (Nagpal et al., 2025). These results align with our analyses and provide further evidence of alignment between continuous approaches to menstrual cycle analysis and natural variance in hormone levels." Two independently developed continuous methods reaching the same conclusion is strong external corroboration of the case PACTS makes against phase binning.

Cites PACTS supportively as motivation for its own method rather than in competition with it. In the Discussion the authors invoke the target twice: first that "there is no universally accepted method for measuring the menstrual cycle as a continuous variable", and then that "recent studies have shown the utility of dividing the menstrual cycle into sub-phases as a means of providing greater insight into the underlying hormonal environment" — using PACTS as evidence that sub-phase resolution is worth having. Their contribution is a route to it from hormone data: an autoregressive Hidden Markov model fit to self-tracked urinary hormone trajectories across more than 3,800 cycles from over 1,100 individuals, mapping days to follicular, periovulatory and luteal phases from day-to-day dynamics rather than absolute levels, with variable phase durations, and outperforming fixed-day scheduling for hormone testing including in polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome.

Narrative, clinically-oriented review synthesizing evidence on hormone sensitivity, PMDD, and premenstrual exacerbation (PME) for practising clinicians. Recommends gold-standard methods — daily prospective symptom tracking across ≥2 cycles and biologically anchored phase determination — and positions PACTS/menstrualcycleR within the methodological toolkit for cycle-informed assessment and case formulation. Cited in order to translate the continuous-cycle approach into clinical practice.

Study protocol for TIDE, a prospective clinical cohort (target n=60) of women in treatment for a depressive episode who complete daily diaries across two consecutive cycles, aiming to estimate PME prevalence and test its links to other hormone-related mood symptoms. Cites PACTS in the analytic-approach framing for continuous cycle-time modeling of daily diary data. As a protocol (analysis not yet run), it references rather than applies the approach, so it is filed under Mentions; the eventual empirical paper will be a real external test of the method worth re-classifying then. Preprint, not yet peer-reviewed.

Review of adolescent hormonal contraceptive use, brain development, and depression risk, with recommendations for future research. Cites PACTS among methodological considerations for rigorously modeling cyclical/hormonal influences in developmental samples — a methods-citation in a developmental-neuroscience context. (Abstract not yet indexed; annotation drawn from title/venue and will refine when the abstract becomes available.)

Dense longitudinal study of vagally-mediated heart rate variability using ovulation-aligned cycle scaling and phase-aligned cyclic GAMMs, applying PACTS end-to-end and naming it in the title. Finds no consistent population-level HRV rhythm across the cycle; instead, pronounced individual-specific cyclic patterns strongly shaped by day-to-day well-being, which the authors argue explains prior inconsistent findings. A textbook application of the method, and notable as the first uptake outside psychiatry/psychology: the 'population-mean masks individual cyclicity' result is exactly the argument PACTS was built to enable.

An honours thesis in which 18 individuals with suspected premenstrual disorder completed two cycles of daily Daily Record of Severity of Problems ratings while wearing an Oura ring. The Methods use PACTS in the menstrualcycleR package to standardize cycle time as a continuous variable anchored to both menses onset and ovulation (Nagpal et al., 2025), with ovulation taken from Oura temperature deviations (15 cycles) or a 14-day backward count (17 cycles); PACTS also generates the group-level, menses-centred symptom figure. Cyclic GAMMs (bs = "cc", factor smooth by person) then estimate per-person symptom cyclicity amplitude and test whether recent stressful life events and sleep moderate it. More recent stressful life events predicted greater perimenstrual severity and cyclicity amplitude; sleep did not mediate either effect. Annotation from the full text.

Feminist/queer-theory narrative review critically examining how the menstrual cycle is operationalized in behavioral neuroendocrinology. Engages methodological "gold standards" for studying the cycle — citing PACTS as an example of rigorous continuous-cycle operationalization — while arguing for context-contingent, stress-aware conceptualizations. Discusses the approach rather than adopting it.

Tests whether fearlessness about death, a component of acquired capability for suicide, fluctuates across the cycle in 46 outpatients with past-month suicidal ideation and natural cycles, using daily ratings of fearlessness and of passive and active ideation across two months, with phases set from self-reported menses onset and ovulation. Fearlessness was stable across cycle day and phase but tracked daily depressed feeling, suggesting capability may not cycle even where ideation does. The citation is confirmed from the Crossref reference list, which carries the target under its PREPRINT title ("Studying the Menstrual Cycle as a Continuous Variable: Implementing Phase-Aligned Cycle Time Scaling (PACTS) With the 'menstrualcycleR' Package", Nagpal A., 2025). CONFIRMED BY A CO-AUTHOR (Eisenlohr-Moul, 2026-10-09): the study did NOT apply PACTS scaling, so this is correctly a mention rather than an application.

Annual Review synthesis treating hormone sensitivity as a heterogeneous, multidimensional phenomenon: reviews menstrually related mood disorders, links cycle sensitivity to other reproductive transitions (puberty, pregnancy/postpartum, perimenopause), and surveys environmental, neurobiological, and cognitive/affective risk factors. Methodological considerations run throughout, with PACTS positioned as the recommended way to model affective change continuously across the cycle. A recommendation in a high-visibility venue, and a self-citation, since three of four authors are on the PACTS paper.

Empirical study (n=112, transdiagnostic) linking peripheral GABA-A receptor subunit mRNA expression (GABRD, GABRG2, GABRA5) to menstrual-cycle affective change across a dimensional range of severity. Aligns daily symptom and LH-timed expression trajectories to continuous cycle time — a direct application of the PACTS/menstrualcycleR framework. From the CLEAR Lab group.

VERIFIED FROM FULL TEXT (PMC12970962). An editorial arguing premenstrual disorders should be treated dimensionally and transdiagnostically rather than through categorical PMDD. PACTS appears in its Recommendations as a concrete research-agenda item: "Develop Diagnostic Methods that Accommodate Cycle Length Variability: Streamline diagnosis through continuous modeling approaches like Phase-Aligned Cycle Time Scaling (PACTS) and Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMMs), which hold promise for reducing diagnostic error arising from menstrual cycle length variability (e.g., due to pubertal or menopausal processes)." Note the reference it hangs on (ref 33) is the menstrualcycleR software citation (Nagpal & Eisenlohr-Moul, GitHub), not the Psychoneuroendocrinology article - Scholar and Europe PMC cluster the two together. Recommends the method as clinical-diagnostic infrastructure.