Precocious puberty: An experience from a major teaching hospital in Central Saudi Arabia

Precocious puberty is a developmental process that gives rise to secondary sexual characteristics before the age of 8 years in girls and 9 years in boys. In general, precocious puberty can be classified as central or peripheral. This is a retrospective hospital-based study was conducted at King Khalid University Hospital (KKUH), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during the period January 1990 and December 2016. Data were abstracted from the medical records of patients diagnosed with precocious puberty, with special emphasis on age, sex, clinical characteristics, and relevant hormonal assay. A total of 62 patients were diagnosed with Precocious Puberty (PP); 43 had Central Precocious Puberty (CPP) while 19 had peripheral precocious puberty (PPP). The majority of girls with CPP (68%) had idiopathic PP, while pathological causes were found in (50%) of boys. The commonest cause of PPP was congenital adrenal hyperplasia (42%) and chronic hypothyroidism (26%). In conclusion, this study showed that precocious Puberty is a common endocrine problem in our center. The etiology of CPP was idiopathic in the majority of girls while it was caused by CNS pathology in most of the boys in this cohort. Peripheral precocious puberty is not that rare and mainly caused by congenital adrenal hyperplasia or hypothyroidism.