Development of Prediction Models Using Machine Learning Algorithms for Girls with Suspected Central Precocious...

Central precocious puberty (CPP) in girls seriously affects their physical and mental development in childhood. The method of diagnosis-gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH)-stimulation test or GnRH analogue (GnRHa)-stimulation test-is expensive and makes patients uncomfortable due to the need for repeated blood sampling.

We aimed to combine multiple CPP-related features and construct machine learning models to predict response to the GnRHa-stimulation test.

In this retrospective study, we analyzed clinical and laboratory data of 1757 girls who underwent a GnRHa test in order to develop XGBoost and random forest classifiers for prediction of response to the GnRHa test. The local interpretable model-agnostic explanations (LIME) algorithm was used with the black-box classifiers to increase their interpretability. We measured sensitivity, specificity, and area under receiver operating characteristic (AUC) of the models.

Both the XGBoost and random forest models achieved good performance in distinguishing between positive and negative responses, with the AUC ranging from 0.88 to 0.90, sensitivity ranging from 77.91% to 77.94%, and specificity ranging from 84.32% to 87.66%. Basal serum luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, and insulin-like growth factor-I levels were found to be the three most important factors. In the interpretable models of LIME, the abovementioned variables made high contributions to the prediction probability.

The prediction models we developed can help diagnose CPP and may be used as a prescreening tool before the GnRHa-stimulation test.