High early puberty rates alarm doctors

By Yang Wanli (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-20 09:28

Children in China's main cities are reaching puberty too early - a condition known as sexual precocity - and at a much higher rate than those in Western countries.

A Beijing doctor, who runs the city's first sexual precocity clinic, said her research into the condition showed that in Shanghai, the rate was as high as 1 percent.

"That is amazing because the rate in most Western countries is between 0.02 and 0.01 percent," said Kong Yuanyuan, whose clinic is at the Beijing Maternal and Child Healthcare Hospital.

"There is no accurate data for Beijing but I think it will be similar to Shanghai."

Kong said an increase in estrogen intake by children, especially girls, might be the main cause.

Foods that contain high amounts of estrogen include some types of milk, silkworm chrysalis and tonics that restore or increase body tone.

"Cosmetics or eating vegetables treated to mature quickly, and eating fruits out of season, may also be the cause, as well as sleeping with the light on."

Kong said one reason for the higher rate in China than in the West might be due to the much higher use of pesticides in vegetables and fruit, which can decompose into elements with high sex hormones.

But her clinic, which opened on Feb 24 and operates every Wednesday, has seen a reduction in the number of patients attending.

Over the past two months, fewer than five patients visited the clinic every week.

"There are still many parents who are not aware of the importance of treating sexual precocity," Kong said.

"If ignored, the condition can affect a child's height and in some cases even result in brain tumors."

The average age for girls to reach puberty is 10, and for boys 12. Some girls as young as four have shown signs of sexual precocity.

An unnamed mother from the Xuanwu district said her daughter was only 9 but had developed breasts.

Kong checked the girl's bone age through radiographs - which was 12 - and said treatment should begin as soon as possible, before her menstrual cycle began.

The girl is now only 1.3 m tall.

"If we don't treat her, she will be no more than 1.5 m," Kong said.

In Beijing's two main children's hospitals, Capital Institute of Pediatrics and Beijing Children's Hospital, sexual precocity can only be diagnosed in endocrine clinics.

"Sexual precocity was detected in China in the 1970s and the number of cases reported grew rapidly in the past 10 years," said Zhang Meihe, director of the endocrine clinic in Beijing Children's Hospital.

"In 1996, we only received about 30 patients every month, but the number reached 60 or 70 last year."

Zhang said oral medicines were widely used to treat sexual precocity in China from 1980s to 1990s.

But since the late 1990s, injections, costing about 2,000 yuan each, were introduced. A child would need an injection once a month until the age of 10.