Prevalence of precocious and early puberty in girls from Elx. It is really that high?: a cross sectional bicentric study

Abstract

Background: Precocious and Early Puberty consist in the onset of the pubertal development in a non physiological age, which is defined in girls in 8 years and 8-to-9 years respectively. Although these limits ages have been recently discussed. It is estimated that 0,2 girls suffer precocious puberty and around 2% early puberty, with a female/male ratio of 20:1. Depending on the activation or not the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis we can find central precocious puberty or peripheral. New aetiologies are being discussed during the last decade due to the big part of idiopathic precocious and early puberty is being diagnosed. Apart of genetics, metabolic, social and environmental risk factors are on the table. On these last, some environmental oestrogenic substances, called Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, seem to play an important role starting the pubertal process. Objectives: The goal of this study is to calculate the prevalence of Precocious Puberty and Early Puberty of the girls from Elx and to compare it with the prevalence in València to demonstrate that in Elx is higher than in other cities. The second main objective is to associate this higher prevalence from Elx to the possible contact of the prepubertal girls from Elx with the footwear industry, which may be acting as an Endocrine Disruptor. Methods: This study is a cross-sectional bicentric study to calculate the prevalence of Precocious and Early Puberty, perform at Hospital General Universitari d’Elx and Hospital Universitari i Politècnic La Fe de València. The sample size will be 876 girls from Elx and València schools selected by a probabilistic method sampling, using a cluster sampling procedure. A 3 years period is estimated