Early Arrival
Premature puberty among girls poses scientific puzzle
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/346459/title/Early_Arrival
I find this article quite interesting on several levels. The list of possible ‘suspects’ is quite broad (no doubt they all have some contribution, very little is black or white in the real world) and the consequences interesting. An earlier post talks about how women are actually bearing children much later in age, it is interesting that women (girls) are becoming fertile at earlier ages. When I started to read the article I was wondering if there might be a genetic/epigenetic issue as well. Perhaps with mothers being older when bearing their first children, perhaps that sets up an epigenetic push to reduce the fertile age of the next generations. While it is easier to look at epigenetic data now than in times past, it is still a rather time consuming (hence expensive) process and not one that lends itself to whole genome analysis. I had high hopes that if I were able to build my DNA sequencing chip that it would be able to easily provide epigenetic data as well, too bad it looks like I will never get that chance.
I also wonder if measuring the size of little girl’s boobs is all that great a measurement of the onset of puberty if they are little porkers. As I have ‘matured’ (i.e., got fat as I got older) I also got boobs and looking down at them they look like they flirt with large A or possibly even small B, so fat little girls (and boys) likely have boobs that have nothing to do with sexual maturity. This, to me, is born out by the article’s comments that menstruation hasn’t seen the same ‘acceleration’ as the boob measurement. For boys it is much harder to know when they have reached sexual maturity, so it is difficult to know if there has been a change there.
