OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that the patterns of pubertal progression, early vs late puberty and fast vs slow, are associated with the age at which girls start to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. DESIGN The study included 1463 female students, 10.7 to 18.2 years of age, who were assessed five times during the 2.7-year study. Data regarding pubertal stage, alcohol use, and cigarette us...

BACKGROUND Reproductive health services in the form of adolescent health and contraceptive services are fundamental in the prevention of a high incidence of teenage pregnancy. The purpose of this study was to determine the age at menarche, menstrual pattern, and awareness of and use of modern contraception among secondary school girls in Abakaliki, Nigeria. SUBJECTS AND MATERIALS This was a c...

Sir Short stature is a cardinal feature of Turner syndrome. We examined height outcome and its relation to growth hormone therapy in Irish girls with Turner syndrome. In those with Turner syndrome (TS), the adult stature is an average 20 cm shorter than the general population 1 . By 15 years of age, the average height of an untreated girl with TS is equivalent to that of only a 9.5-year-old gir...

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of acanthosis nigricans (AN) on depression symptoms, related quality of life and self-esteem scores in obese adolescent girls. METHODS Fifty-nine obese adolescent girls (mean age: 13.19±1.3 years, age range: 12-17 years, mean body mass index: 29.89±3.30) were enrolled in this study. The obese adolescent girls were divided into two groups based on presence or abs...

OBJECTIVE Younger age at menarche (AAM) may put girls at risk for earlier first sexual intercourse (FSI). Young age at FSI has far-reaching negative outcomes. We describe the longitudinal relationship between AAM and FSI in a large prospective birth cohort. METHODS AAM was collected from 554 girls from the Western Australia (Raine) Pregnancy Cohort Study, prospectively from age 10 or retrospe...

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the dentoalveolar and skeletal cephalometric changes produced by headgear (HG) biteplane and bionator appliances in subjects with Class II Division 1 malocclusion. METHODS The sample comprised 60 patients with Class II Division 1 malocclusion; 30 (15 boys, 15 girls; mean age, 10.02 years) were treated with the HG biteplane for a m...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The etiology of moyamoya disease (MMD) remains obscure. This study was undertaken to identify specific proteins associated with the pathogenesis of MMD. METHODS We studied cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from 20 patients with angiographically confirmed MMD (4 boys and 16 girls; age range, 3 to 13 years; mean, 7.5 years) and 4 control patients with cerebral palsy who underwent...

Good personal hygiene in primary school children could be effective towards preventing infectious diseases. This work examined personal cleanliness of primary school children in Banki based on the following variables: bathing, state of uniforms, hair, nails and oral hygiene. One hundred and fifty primary school children in Banki community were selected using the cluster random sampling method. ...

Although there is knowledge about earlier mean age at menopause among left-handed postmenopausal women, it is unclear from the literature whether age of menarche is influenced by the prenatal hormonal pattern and cerebral lateralization. We therefore planned to investigate the relation between age of menarche and cerebral lateralization in girls at an altitude of nearly 2000 m. Sixty-two girls,...

Isolated cleft lip and/or palate, CL(P), may be associated with multiple changes in the developing dentition. To test the hypothesis that permanent tooth formation is delayed in patients with CL(P), dental maturity was assessed from panoramic radiographs. The dental maturity ratio (DMR, dental age divided by chronological age) of a group of CL(P) patients (23 girls, 30 boys) was compared with m...