What is it about?
Adrenarche, the increased production of androgenic hormones from the adrenal gland, manifests as adult type body odor, oilyness of hair and skin, and development of pubic hair. it is regarded early if these signs are present before 8 years in a girl or 9 years in a boy. This article describes typical features of earlier than normal (=premature) adrenarche. Both clinical symptoms and laboratory values are presented in a Finnish case-control cohort.
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Why is it important?
It is important to differentiate benign premature adrenarche from more severe causes of androgen excess. The typical features of early adrenarche have not been described in detail before. Previous studies usually have included only patients with early development of pubic hair, while this article describes the ”real world data” showing more variable clinical presentation of the phenomenon. Importantly, we provide a definition to some terms used in the ”premature adrenarche” literature.
Perspectives
This article is actually a summary of the vast clinical data we obtained from our case-control cohort study, in which I personnally examined and interviewed all the study subjects. Before writing this article it came clear that we should clearly define first the concepts of premature adrenarche and I am very happy that we were able to do so in this article.
M.D., PH.D. Pauliina Utriainen
Helsingin Yliopisto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Continuum of phenotypes and sympathoadrenal function in premature adrenarche, European Journal of Endocrinology, April 2009, Bioscientifica,
DOI: 10.1530/eje-08-0367.
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