Puberty

Every few years, a scientific paper on the declining age of puberty in US girls gets media attention. Girls have been entering puberty earlier and earlier, especially African-American and Hispanic girls, since the 1990s. Rising obesity is often the prevailing explanation.

However, the rise in early puberty began before the rise in childhood obesity, which means obesity cannot be the only factor.

Our working hypothesis was that more stress increases the pool of androgens; in turn, more adipose tissue converts the abundance of androgens into estrogens, leading to earlier puberty.

There has been little research that investigates both mental (e.g., stress) and physical (e.g., adiposity) drivers of puberty. We examined interactions of stress, body fat, and hormones in the LEGACY Girls Study supported through a NCI Career Development  award with Mentor Mary Beth Terry, PhD (NCI K07CA218166, “The Role of Androgens in Breast Cancer Susceptibility Across the Lifecourse”)

We also study adrenarche, maturation of adrenal androgen hormone production, that usually occurs in children between ages 6 to 8. Adrenarche is a mysterious part of human evolution that sets humans apart from other primates because we are the only species with an extended juvenile period that sits between childhood and adolescence. Our ongoing investigations into the steroid metabolome underpinning of all the stages of puberty help determine whether adrenarche and puberty are distinct or linked—an issue with direct implications for pediatric practices relevant to precocious puberty diagnosis and gender-affirming care, where timing relative to pubertal stage matters.         

Houghton LC. Why We Need More Biocultural Studies of Pubertal Timing. J Adolesc Health. 2021 Jul;69(1):4-5. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.04.013. PMID: 34172142.

Houghton LC, Wei Y, Wang T, Goldberg M, Paniagua-Avila A, Sweeden RL, Bradbury A, Daly M, Schwartz LA, Keegan T, John EM, Knight JA, Andrulis IL, Buys SS, Frost CJ, O'Toole K, White ML, Chung WK, Terry MB. Body mass index rebound and pubertal timing in girls with and without a family history of breast cancer: the LEGACY girls study. Int J Epidemiol. 2022 Oct 13;51(5):1546-1555. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyac021. PMID: 35157067; PMCID: PMC9799198.

Houghton LC, Knight JA, Wei Y, Romeo RD, Goldberg M, Andrulis IL, Bradbury AR, Buys SS, Daly MB, John EM, Chung WK, Santella RM, Stanczyk FZ, Terry MB. Association of Prepubertal and Adolescent Androgen Concentrations With Timing of Breast Development and Family History of Breast Cancer. JAMA Netw Open. 2019 Feb 1;2(2):e190083. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.0083. PMID: 30794303; PMCID: PMC6484611.

Houghton LC, Troisi R, Sommer M, Katki HA, Booth M, Choudhury OA, Hampshire KR. "I'm not a freshi": Culture shock, puberty and growing up as British-Bangladeshi girls. Soc Sci Med. 2020 Aug;258:113058. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113058. Epub 2020 May 21. PMID: 32504913; PMCID: PMC7369632.

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