Early Puberty and Hormone Disruptors
Zümer Duman1, Gizem Kanat1, Oytun Erbaş1,2
1ERBAS Institute of Experimental Medicine, Illinois, USA & Gebze, Turkey
2Department of Physiology, Medical Faculty of Demiroğlu Bilim University, Istanbul, Turkey
Keywords: Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, early puberty, endocrine disrupting chemicals
Abstract
Adolescence is a dynamic mechanism influenced by a variety of factors like race, gender, and environmental forces as well as physical and psychological processes. The first symptoms of puberty are noticeable changes such as the formation of pubic hair, breast size, and body odor, and since these changes are most readily detected in females, research on early puberty are often done and analyzed on females. While there is no definitive lower age limit, it is eight years for girls and nine years for boys. The observation of transition in children under this age is called early puberty, but as our diet and lifestyle change, this age limit is shrinking, and its prevalence is increasing. While not all causes of early puberty have been identified, the most frequent one is early activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis, which can be caused by a variety of hormone disruptors. The general causes of precocious puberty and the effects of multiple hormone disruptors are discussed in this paper.
Cite this article as: Duman Z, Kanat G, Erbaş O. Early Puberty and Hormone Disruptors. JEB Med Sci 2021;2(2):261-266.
The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.