Table 5.
Causes of delayed and early puberty
Delay in puberty |
• Constitutional delay of growth and puberty (boys) |
• Poor nutrition |
• Chronic illness |
• Eating disorder |
• Severe psychosocial stress |
• Disorder of hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis |
Early puberty |
• Familial |
• Obesity (girls) |
• Benign normal variants of pubertal timing : isolated thelarche (early breast development), premature adrenarche (early pubic hair development) |
• Abnormalities of the central nervous system that disrupt the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis |
• Gonadotrophin independent “precocious pseudopuberty” |