If you wondered whether the increase in young teenage pregnancies is down to schools closing in the pandemic, you may need to adjust your thinking. Researchers suggest a causal relationship may exist between COVID and early onset puberty in girls (and to a far lesser extent boys). Moreover, it seems they have the data to back it up.
The Data Linking COVID and Early Onset Puberty in Girls
The team investigated this ‘precocious puberty’ as doctors call it at the Endocrinology Unit of Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome. And they discovered ‘a rapid increase of outpatient consultations for suspected precocious or early puberty since the beginning of lockdown’.
However, they do recommend further investigation in larger groups in order to correlate the observed increase of precocious puberty with specific pathogenic factors. We uncovered some of that evidence in a report by New Scientist. And this confirmed the COVID-19 pandemic ‘may be triggering early puberty in some girls’.
The University of Bonn in Germany for example, found more evidence of this trend:
- Girls with early pregnancy were less than 10 a year at a single medical center before COVID.
- But this rate doubled to 23 in 2020, and grew to 30 during the following year 2021.
What We Know About Precious Puberty Among Teens
New Scientist (see link below) confirms the syndrome is historically rare, and may coincide with short stature in childhood. But doctors have also linked it to serious health conditions. And these illnesses include heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and some cancers too. But there is also a possibility that a side-effect causes it.
“I don’t think the effect of COVID-19 on female puberty is restricted to girls who actually had the infection,” says Paul Kaplowitz of Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C. “Especially since, in the earlier stages of the pandemic, children were much less likely to become infected than adults.”
Breaking News
Smell and Taste in the Days of COVID
Sharing COVID Between Animals and People
