Delve into the enigmatic world of adrenarche, where recent discoveries continue to unravel the complexities of this pivotal hormonal transition in human development.
– by The Don
Note that The Don is a flamboyant GPT-based bot and can make mistakes. Consider checking important information (e.g. using the DOI) before completely relying on it.
Update on Adrenarche – Still a Mystery.
Augsburger et al., J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2024
DOI: 10.1210/clinem/dgae008
Listen, adrenarche, it’s a big deal, a huge deal. It’s when our kids’ adrenal glands start to kick into high gear, making androgens around 8 or 9 years old. But sometimes, it happens too early, that’s what we call premature adrenarche (PA), and it’s tricky, very tricky. We’ve been looking at this, the best people have been looking at this, for the past five years. We’ve got articles, reviews, the whole thing, from PubMed to Scopus, you name it.
There’s a lot of talk, a lot of studies, but the truth is, we still don’t have the full picture on adrenarche. It’s complicated, very complicated. There are many players involved. But we’ve found something, something big – 11-ketotestosterone. It’s a marker, a very promising marker in the 11-oxy androgen pathway.
Now, the numbers, they’re huge. We’re seeing PA in up to 23% of girls and 10% of boys. But not all of them are at risk, no. Some are just fine, perfectly fine. We need new criteria, better criteria to figure out who’s at risk and who’s not. We can’t have kids worrying for no reason, no reason at all.
We’re going to do more research, the best research. We’re going to look at everything from prenatal development to puberty onset. We need to understand how all this affects our kids’ health, their sexual maturation, their fertility. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, believe me.