Abstract
Premature pubarche (PP) in girls is considered to be a benign phenomenon and is the clinical expression of premature adrenarche. Since it does not usually increase the risk of either abnormalities in pubertal development or a reduced final adult height, a non-interventional approach is generally adopted after exclusion of non-classical (NC) congenital adrenal hyper-plasia (CAH). Extremely premature pubarche is nevertheless not a pubertal variant. We here report two cases of adrenocortical tumors (ACT) for which precocious pubarche was the initial sign. This report suggests that premature pubarche is not always a mere pubertal variant and that a delay in the etiological diagnosis can be harmful. Therefore, pubarche before the age of four years should be considered as a feature of ACT or NC CAH until proven otherwise.
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Paris, F., Kalfa, N., Philibert, P. et al. Very premature pubarche in girls is not a pubertal variant. Hormones 11, 356–360 (2012). https://doi.org/10.14310/horm.2002.1365
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14310/horm.2002.1365