ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Central precocious puberty (CPP) refers to the development of secondary sex characteristics before ages 8 and 9 years in girls and boys, respectively. It is either due to organic brain lesion or idiopathic. Conventionally, Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone (GnRH) stimulation test is a mainstay tool for diagnosis of central precocious puberty in pediatrics. However, it is time consuming and expensive. Therefore, this study was aiming to find an alternative simple diagnostic modality for diagnosis of central precocious puberty.

Methods: From Jan 2019 to Jan 2021, the medical records of 42 children with early secondary sex characteristics were reviewed including their age, height, weight, Tanner staging of secondary sex characters, bone age, imaging studies and hormonal profile. Basal serum LH and GnRH stimulation test were done for all patients. Receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) were done to obtain the optimal basal in correlation to peak LH after GnRH stimulation.

Results: Among the study cohort, there were 17 children with CPP, 4 children with peripheral precocious puberty and 21 children with premature thelarche. The cutoff value of basal serum LH was 0.33 IU/L for diagnosis of CPP and differentiation between GnRH stimulation positive and negative results (P = 0.001, area under the curve [AUC]=0.941, 88% sensitivity, 76% specificity, 71.4% positive predictive value, 90.5% negative predictive value).

Conclusion: Basal serum LH can be used as a valuable simple tool for diagnosis of central precocious puberty compared to the standard GnRH stimulation test.