http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/fiona-neill/puberty-bluesBoys’ voices are breaking earlier; girls are developing breasts as young as six. But why? Fiona Neill meets the Danish scientists who are on the case ...
-snip-
His team of paediatric endocrinologists—specialists in glands and hormones—had noticed an alarming increase in the number of children being referred with symptoms of early puberty. The choir story resonated with what they were seeing.
They had seen a surge in the number of young girls showing signs of breast development, some as young as six. They wanted to know if there was a connection between what they were seeing in clinic and what was happening at the choir school. In 1997 researchers had begun pointing to a dramatic decline in the age of puberty in America. Was the same thing now happening in Europe?
-long snip on how the study proceded and learned-
Dr Richard Stanhope, a leading British paediatric endocrinologist who has spent 24 years at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, believes this presents dramatic challenges. He feels that children who go into early puberty are prematurely sexualised and too immature to deal with the implications. They are more vulnerable to sexual abuse, inappropriate sexual behaviour, sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy. “It means that children develop sexually much earlier,” Stanhope says. “They are physically ready for sexual reproduction but mentally completely unready.”
-snip-
Research published this year in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology also found increased aggression in girls who reached puberty early. In Britain the uncomfortable reality that children are becoming sexually mature earlier has been overlooked in the recent debate about the over-sexualisation of children. Instead of simply focusing on cynical manufacturers producing padded bras for seven-year-olds, perhaps we should also consider how to respond to the new reality that some girls are now growing breasts at this age.
Stanhope also points out that for women there may be long-term health problems, because early puberty increases exposure to oestrogen. According to Cancer Research UK, a girl who has her first period a year later than her contemporaries has 5% less risk of developing breast cancer in later life. “There may be an important link with breast and ovarian cancer,” Stanhope says. “The earlier a girl has her period, the longer her exposure to oestrogen and this may well have very important sequelae for oestrogen-dependent tumours. This increases her risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and of developing cardiovascular problems.”
Girls who reach puberty early are also more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. A 37-year-long study of 61,000 Norwegian women showed that women who got their first period at ten or 11 had a 10% higher mortality rate than those who got their period four years later.
-long snip-
In a small room smelling strongly of bleach, a machine known as a Triple Mass Spectrometer whirrs away. At one end of it tiny test-tubes of blood belonging to these same Danish schoolgirls are lined up. Each sample is put through the machine in order to separate seven different chemical compounds called phthalates. The same process also takes place with urine samples from the girls.
The compounds under the spotlight are all Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs), mostly man-made, and believed to have a corrosive influence on the way hormones work in our bodies. According to Anders Juul, most EDCs either mimic sex hormones, oestrogens in females and androgens in males, or interfere with the way they are metabolised. He believes they may be responsible for influencing when puberty starts and how it progresses.
Above the noise, the senior chemist, Hanne Frederiksen, explains that once the phthalates have been separated from each sample, they will see if there are higher levels of these hormone disruptors in the girls who are growing breasts earlier.
“My instinct is that EDCs are involved in early breast development,” says Juul. “It’s more of a gut feeling than anything else…We don’t have any strong evidence as yet, but I think it’s a sound hypothesis that needs to be proven or disproven. We need to consider what has changed in the environment over the past 15 years. It would be fantastic to know we were wrong and that EDCs are not involved in early puberty.”
-snip-
The adverse effects of oestrogenic pollutants have been known since the early 1990s, when Professor John Sumpter, a fish physiologist at Brunel University, reported an outbreak of hermaphrodite fish in rivers in England. Male fish were found to be developing smaller testes and were producing the female yolk protein found in eggs, so they were becoming feminised. The results of his investigations led Sumpter to suspect that man-made industrial chemicals in sewage effluent were acting as female oestrogens.
-snip-
If you were to do a line-up of the key suspects, Skakkebaek says, phthalates like the seven being tested in the laboratory would come first. These are substances that are added to plastics to increase their flexibility, transparency and durability. A few have already been phased out of products in America and Europe over health concerns. But the phthalates that make plastic flexible are still found in anything from cellophane to shower curtains to toys, and they are omnipresent in food packaging. Despite extensive research, their effects on humans are still poorly understood.
The next suspect would be Bisphenol A, a component of polycarbonate found in the lining of tin cans, children’s feeding cups and in plastic bottles, including baby bottles. Later this year the urine and blood samples from the Danish puberty study will be tested for this chemical. Skakkabaek points out that animal experiments have shown that Bisphenol A is a weak oestrogen that can accelerate pubertal development in mice. But there is still controversy over whether neonatal exposure can trigger early puberty. Last year the Danish government passed a motion to prevent the use of Bisphenol A in milk bottles, but it has yet to be enacted. In 2008 Canada followed suit. In January the US Food and Drug Administration recommended a similar ban on Bisphenol A in baby bottles and infant feeding cups because of “concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behaviour and prostate gland in fetuses, infants and young children,” based on recent studies using “novel approaches to test for subtle effects”.
-snip-
The research continues. We know little about how the human body copes with the chemicals that have inveigled their way into our daily life. The Danish study, to be published next year, should leave us the wiser about the role they play in turning our children into adults before their time.
-----------------------------------
this information/subject is extremely important to us all
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
