Given that I have an eight-and-a-half-year-old who looks and often acts much older than her age, puberty has been on my mind a lot lately. (So much so, in fact, that I just got the highly regarded book The New Puberty: How to navigate early development in today's girls - y'know, just in case). I was interested, then, to come across results of a recent U.K. study that examined the effect of the timing of puberty onset on later physical health.
A Medical Research Council press release nicely summarizes the work, which is the largest of its kind to date:
The study, published in Scientific Reports, confirms previous findings that early puberty in women is a risk factor for heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and showed, for the first time, that early puberty in men also influences these same conditions.
In addition, new links were found between the timing of puberty and a wider range of health conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, arthritis, glaucoma, psoriasis and depression in men and women, and also early menopause in women.
Researchers tested data from nearly half a million people in UK Biobank, a national study for health research funded primarily by the [Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge] and the Wellcome Trust. Participants were asked to recall puberty-timing by remembering the age of their first monthly period for women and age at voice-breaking for men.
Those in the earliest or latest 20 percent to go through puberty had higher risks for late-life disease when compared to those in the middle 20 percent, including around 50 percent higher relative risks for type 2 diabetes, heart disease and poor overall health. Furthermore, these disease links were not simply explained by nutritional status or obesity.
It's important to note that the study relied on self reports versus medical records on puberty timing - which the authors call the main limitation of their work. In addition, as is emphasized in the release, the findings don't show cause and effect but instead demonstrate "a causal link between puberty and certain diseases." Still, the results are interesting and appear important enough for more scientific digging; as the authors conclude in the paper, "further work is needed to understand the possible... mechanisms that link puberty timing to later life health outcomes."
Previously: Study shows former foster kids face higher risk of future health problems, "The child is father of the man": Exploring developmental origins of health and disease and Research shows kids' health good predictor of parents' future health
Photo by EME
