Kiviranta Panu, Kuiri-Hänninen Tanja, Saari Antti, Lamidi Marja-Leena, Dunkel Leo, Sankilampi Ulla
Department of Pediatrics, Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland; Department of Pediatrics and.
Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland; and.
Pediatrics. 2016 Jul;138(1). doi: 10.1542/peds.2015-3561. Epub 2016 Jun 9.
Transient activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis with a sex steroid surge is observed in boys and girls during the first months of life. However, the role of sex steroids in the regulation of growth has not been substantiated in infancy. We tested the hypothesis that testosterone (T) surge, known to be higher in infant boys than in girls during the transient postnatal gonadal activation regulates linear growth in infants.
To characterize in detail the linear growth velocity (GV) differences between genders in the normal population in early infancy, we evaluated growth of 18 570 healthy infants (51.0% boys) with 162 003 height measurements from birth to 12 months of age. GV was monitored and compared with serially measured urinary T and estradiol levels and serum insulin-like growth factor 1 levels in 84 healthy infants (45% boys) during the first 6 months of life.
GV was significantly faster from birth to 6 months of age in boys than in girls (P ≤ .01). The greatest GV difference, 4.1 cm per year, was observed at 1 month of age, simultaneously with the peak of postnatal gonadal activation. In the mixed model analysis, GV showed a significant positive association with T in both genders (parameter estimate up to 0.62, 95% confidence interval 0.44-0.81).
These results provide a new insight into the regulation of growth in infants and elucidate a novel biological role of the transient postnatal gonadal activation in growth regulation.
在出生后的头几个月，男孩和女孩都会出现下丘脑 - 垂体 - 性腺轴的短暂激活，并伴有性类固醇激增。然而，性类固醇在婴儿期生长调节中的作用尚未得到证实。我们检验了这样一个假设：在出生后性腺短暂激活期间，已知男婴的睾酮（T）激增高于女婴，它可调节婴儿的线性生长。
为详细描述正常人群中婴儿早期男女性别之间的线性生长速度（GV）差异，我们评估了18570名健康婴儿（51.0%为男孩）从出生到12个月大的生长情况，共进行了162003次身高测量。在84名健康婴儿（45%为男孩）出生后的前6个月，监测其GV，并将其与连续测量的尿T、雌二醇水平及血清胰岛素样生长因子1水平进行比较。
从出生到6个月大，男孩的GV显著快于女孩（P≤0.01）。在1个月大时观察到最大的GV差异，为每年4.1厘米，此时正值出生后性腺激活的高峰期。在混合模型分析中，GV在两性中均与T呈显著正相关（参数估计高达0.62，95%置信区间为0.44 - 0.81）。
这些结果为婴儿生长调节提供了新的见解，并阐明了出生后性腺短暂激活在生长调节中的新生物学作用。
