ESPE Abstracts

Background & objective: The occurrence of CPP seems to be increasing in our clinical practice thesedays. It is known that CPP causes socio-psychological disturbances relating to early pubertal changes and finally leads to a significant decrease in the final adult height because of premature closure of the growth plate. This study was conducted to see major factors affecting to the bone maturation, which is closely related to the final adult height in girls with CPP.

Materials & Methods: The study patients consisted of 164 girls who was diagnosed with CPP for previous 5 yrs in the department of Pediatric Endocrinology, Kyungpook National University Children’s Hospital, Daegu, Republic of Korea. The diagnosis of CPP was made when the patient showed the first pubertal sign of breast enlargement before the age of 8 years, and peak LH>5 mIU/mL in GnRH stimulation test. We compared and analyzed relations between the severity of bone-age advancement and various clinical and laboratory chracteristics retrospectively.

Results: The chronological age (CA) of study patients was 7.18±0.82 yrs, and their bone age (BA) was 8.66±1.33 yrs. We compared various clinical & laboratory data with Δ BA-CA(yr) to find out (a) factor(s) affecting the bone maturation. The only statistically significant correlation was observed between Δ BA-CA(yr) and peak LH/FSH ratio (r=0.344 P=0.000). No other significant correlation was observed with the age, height, weight, body mass index, pubertal stage (SMR), basal & peak FSH and basal & peak LH in our patients.

Conclusions: It appears that the bone-age advancement was significantly correlated with the peak LH/FSH ratio in girls with CPP. This suggests that the peak LH/FSH ratio is one of key indicators ralated to bone maturation. Large-scaled studies are neccessary.