Endocrine Abstracts

INTRODUCTION: The usefulness of suppressing true precocious puberty (TPP) in order to improve the final height is still under discussion and may depend on early diagnosis and timely treatment. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the effects of the treatment on uterine and ovarian morphology before and after two years of therapy.

METHODS: U/S was performed on 15 girls with TPP whose mean age was 6.92plus/minus SD1.09 years at the time of diagnosis. All patients had their first pubertal sign present before 8. U/S was performed using a 3.5-7 MHz probe by a single ATL-SIEMENS operator before and after two years of treatment and uterine and ovarian volumes calculated as the length x height x width product. The Wilcoxon paired-signed rank test was used for comparison purposes.

RESULTS: After two years of treatment a significant decrease in uterine and ovarian volume was noticed. The uterine and ovarian volumes had decreased significantly after treatment (uterine volumes 16.7plus/minus SD6.7 cm³ - 7.8plus/minus SD4.1 cm³ p<0.05, right ovarian volume 2.76plus/minus SD1.34 cm³ -1.65plus/minus SD0.75 cm³ p<0.005, left ovarian volume 2.96plus/minus SD1.76 cm³ - 1.66plus/minus SD0.89 cm³ p<0.005). The number of ovarian follicles was significantly lower(p<0.05) but the volume of follicles was not significantly different from the volume in the beginning of therapy.

CONCLUSION: Treatment with triptoreline 3.75 mg has a beneficial effect on children with precocious puberty. In this context, ultrasonography is an accurate, useful, cheap and non invasive tool for monitoring the effectiveness of therapy.