Preventing vitamin D deficiency may help delay early puberty.
A presentation at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting held in San Francisco this year revealed a greater risk of precocious puberty in girls with deficient levels of vitamin D in comparison with girls who entered puberty at a normal age. *
The research included 110 girls aged 7 to 10 years, among whom 35 were categorized as having experienced precocious puberty according to the Tanner Scale. Blood samples collected from the subjects were analyzed for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and other factors.
Vitamin D levels were lower on average among girls with early puberty in comparison with girls who entered puberty at a normal age. Forty-four percent of the girls who underwent precocious puberty had serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels that were classified as severely deficient at less than 10 ng/mL in comparison with 21% of the normal group.
Editor's Note: In additional experimentation, the researchers found that the administration of vitamin D suppressed the ability of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) to release gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH, which triggers the ovulation process) from neurons.
* The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting, San Francisco. 2013 Jun 17.
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|Title Annotation:||IN THE NEWS|
|Article Type:||Brief article|
|Date:||Sep 1, 2013|
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