Puberty is accompanied by physical, psychological, and emotional changes adapted to ensure reproductive and parenting success. Human puberty stands out in the animal world for its association with brain maturation and physical growth. Its effects on health and wellbeing are profound and paradoxical. On the one hand, physical maturation propels an individual into adolescence with peaks in streng...

Pubertal status is related to childhood growth and independently associated with health outcomes such as lung function, blood pressure and mental health (1). However, self-assessment of pubertal status is difficult in young children as relevant questions may either be too difficult for young children, especially boys, to answer reliably or perceived to be culturally inappropriate (1–5). This is...

BACKGROUND To explore associations between pubertal growth and later bone health in a cohort with infrequent measurements, using another cohort with more frequent measurements to support the modelling, data from the Medical Research Council (MRC) National Survey of Health and Development (2-26 years, 4901/30 004 subjects/measurements) and the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents And Children (ALS...

OBJECTIVE: To present the methods for clinical evaluation of sexual maturation in adolescents. METHODS: Bibliographic review concerning the practice of pubertal staging. RESULTS: The assessment of sexual maturation is an essential step in the comprehensive health care of adolescents, allowing for the evaluation of their developmental stage. In addition, this assessment allows establishing a cor...

Many pollutants are endocrine disruptors with impacts on reproduction and health in animals, but evidence in humans, of which sex-specific effects on pubertal development may be an indicator, is less clear. We examined the association of air pollution in utero and during early life with pubertal development in Hong Kong, China, an area with a high level of air pollution compared with other simi...

Self-report measures of perceived pubertal timing correspond only weakly with clinical measures of "objective" physical development. Peer and school contexts shape adolescents' self-perceptions of pubertal timing. The current study examined associations between perceived pubertal timing and the pubertal timing reported by nominated friends and schoolmates. Participants included 2817 adolescents...

OBJECTIVES The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between advanced pubertal development and adolescent dating abuse (ADA) and to test if this relationship is moderated by friendship group characteristics in a nationally representative sample of US girls. METHODS Data were drawn from wave 1 and 2 (1995-1996) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. The...

Pendrin (PDS) and sodium/iodide symporter (NIS) are transmembrane proteins that are located in numerous tissue types, particularly thyroid follicular epithelial cells, where they are entrusted with the regulation of iodine molecules. In the present study, we aimed to clarify changes in PDS and NIS protein expression, in the testicular tissue of prepubertal and <span la...

BACKGROUND In many countries age at pubertal onset has declined substantially. Relatively little attention has been paid to how this decline may affect adolescent behaviours such as substance use, violence and unprotected sex and consequently impact on public health. METHODS In the UK, two opportunistic samples (aged 16-45 years), paper-based (n = 976) and online (n = 1117), examined factors ...