Obesity in US girls is growing at the same time as earlier and earlier puberty, and researchers say the two are linked.
More than 1,200 girls from 6 to 8 years old were followed at regular intervals in San Francisco, greater Cincinnati, and New York City in the study.
“Onset of Breast Development in a Longitudinal Cohort,” the study, found that girls with greater Body Mass Index (a common measurement of obesity) reached breast stage 2, or puberty, at earlier ages.
“The girls who are obese are clearly maturing earlier,” Dr. Frank Biro, a pediatrics professor at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told NBC. “BMI is, we found, the biggest single factor for the onset of puberty.”
“The impact of earlier maturation in girls has important clinical implications,” the researchers say in the study. “Clinicians may need to examine additional contemporary studies to decide whether to lower the age for late maturation in girls, and possibly age of precocious puberty.”
Studies such as this one show that there is no doubt that US children are entering puberty earlier, said Dr. Neerav “Nick” Desai, an adolescent medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University, who was not involved in the study.
“The numbers in this study are very precise,” Desai said. “It’s more precise than any other.”
Marcia Herman-Giddens of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrote an editorial accompanying the study.
“Each individual girl is exposed to multiple factors in today’s environment, many not present decades ago, that may potentially influence her pubertal onset,” she wrote.
“Furthermore, because early puberty and menarche are associated with many detrimental health and psychosocial issues, we must not accept this premature development as the ‘new normal.”
