Leptin and puberty in boys

ABSTRACT

To determine the relationship of leptin to the onset of puberty, serum leptin levels were measured in 29 healthy boys [14 in Tanner stage 1 and 15 in Tanner stage 2] and 15 boys with delayed puberty. Auxological parameters as height, weight, BMI, biceps, triceps and suprailiac skin fold thickness and bone age were determined for all boys. LH, FSH and testosterone were measured before and after triptorelin stimulation for boys with delayed puberty. Healthy prepubertal boys [group one] had a mean leptin level of 8.94 +/- 4.33 ng/ml, those in early puberty [group two] had a mean leptin level of 6.95 +/- 4.5 ng/ml, while boys with delayed puberty [group three] had a mean leptin value of 2.59 +/- 0.99 ng/ml, which was significantly lower than the leptin levels in both groups. Also, boys with delayed puberty had significantly lower values for BMI, BMI SDS and weight for height SDS when compared with the other two groups. When BMI SDS was corrected for bone age for children with delayed puberty, it was still significantly lower when compared with the other two groups. This may explain the low values of leptin observed in boys with delayed puberty, especially that no significant difference was observed between the three groups as regards skin fold thickness