Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The aim of the study was to assess the impact of obesity and birth weight (BW) at diagnosis of premature adrenarche (PA) in a large cohort of greek children.

Methods/design: We assessed clinical and laboratory characteristics of 221 children (175 girls and 46 boys) at diagnosis of PA.

Results: At diagnosis of PA 149 children (67.4%) had pubic hair (Tanner stage ≥2), 10 (4.5%) had axillary hair (Tanner stage ≥2) and 62 (28.1%) had both axillary and pubic hair. Mean (±S.D.) bone age was significantly higher than chronological age (7.4±2.1 vs 6.6±1.8 years girls; P<0.001 and 8.6±2.3 vs 7.3±2.0 years boys; P<0.001). Among the 221 children with PA, 57 (26%) were overweight and 64 (29.0%) were obese, which is higher than the prevalence of obesity among prepubertal greek children. There was a positive correlation between BMI and testosterone levels (r=0.17, P=0.02), DHEAS levels (r=0.27, P<0.001) and bone age minus chronological age (r=0.19, P=0.006), Among the 187 full term pregnancy children there was a negative correlation between BW and testosterone (r=−0.21, P=0.005), DHEAS (r=−0.15, P=0.038), 17-OH-progesterone (r=−0.23, P=0.002) and D₄-Androstendione levels (r=−0.18, P=0.04).

Conclusions: Obesity and lower birth weight are associated with increased androgen levels among children with PA.