PRECOCIOUS PUBERTY - AUXOLOGICAL CRITERIA DISCRIMINATING DIFFERENT FORMS

It may be possible to recognize different forms of precocious puberty at the first evaluation. In a group of 26 sexually precocious girls we used Bayley-Pinneau predicted adult height (P.A.H.) to discriminate p atients with 'poor' or 'good' height prognosis. Patients with evidence of impaired height prognosis (P.A.H. <-1 SDS) (Group 1)were immediate ly treated with LH-RH analogs, while patients with unimpaired height p rognosis (P.A.H. >-1 SDS) (Group 2) were followed without therapy. Two yr of treatment significantly improved P.A.H. in Group 1 patients, fr om a mean of -1.68+/-0.4 to a mean of -0.57+/-0.6 (SDS) (p<0.01). Afte r the 2 yr observation period, Group 2 patients showed no significant variation of P.A.H. (from a mean of 0.45+/-0.8 to a mean of 0.33+/-0.6 ). The retrospective analysis of the growth pattern changes in the two Groups seems to indicate that LH-RH agonist treatment improves height potential in girls with initial poor height prognosis and that girls with initial good height prognosis maintain an unimpaired growth poten tial.