Effect of familial distress on growth and maturation of girls: a longitudinal study.

A longitudinal sample of girls (N = 271), all born during the same year, were examined at yearly intervals during a period of 11 (N = 174) or 8 years (N = 97). The data gathered included the following: age at menarche, anthropometric dimensions, skeletal maturity scores with the TW2 method, and questionnaire information about the present and past socioeconomic situation and family dynamics. The girls were divided into two groups. Group A (N = 207) comprised girls who lived in families free of strong traumatic events. Group B (N = 64) included girls whose family dysfunction exposed them to prolonged distress. Two anthropometric dimensions were central to the analysis: height and subischial leg length. Age at attaining four different maturity stages were also used: age at menarche, age at a Carpal score of 1,000, age at the RUS score of 1,000, and age at the total bone score of 995. The mean age at menarche of girls from group A was 13.3 years and that for girls in group B was 12.9 (F = 6.295, P < 0.01). There was no correlation between age and height at final stages of skeletal maturation, i.e., at a total bone score of 995 or a RUS score of 1,000 in group A. There was no significant difference in height between girls whose skeletal maturity was completed early and those in whom it was completed late. Girls from group B, whose skeletal maturity was reached earlier, were shorter than those who grew until a later age. In group B, the stature was positively correlated with the age at which the late stages of skeletal maturation was attained (r = 0.26 at a RUS score of 1,000 and r = 0.28 at a total bone score of 995, P < 0.05). Regardless of the ages at which any of the four maturity levels were reached by girls from group A, they were, on average, taller than those from group B at the same maturity level. Only at a RUS score of 1,000, when the sample size is reduced, the difference was not significant. The results show that girls exposed to familial distress are more likely to have an early puberty, which is associated with short final stature.

Stature of boys post World War II migrants.

Poland is a country with significant regional differences in socio-economic, demographic and epidemiological phenomena. This is partly due to its history; notably the division of Poland among three different countries and the change of the borders after the second World War. The latter caused massive migratory movements of population. Then from the territory which now constitutes one third of Poland, Germans were evicted and Poles settled. These, then new, Western and Northern Territories of Poland (WNTP) are still the most developed parts of Poland with better roads, better housing and easier access to medical service and schools. On the other hand, some of the statistical data concerning the health and lifestyle of the population of these parts of Poland are worse than the corresponding data concerning the rest of Poland. For example the rate of lung cancer, the rate of divorce, the rate of adolescence pregnancies, the rate of cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption are all higher in the WNTP. In 1955, a very comprehensive anthropological nationwide survey of school children was performed. Our findings based on this material exhibit a number of phenomena which might contribute to the explanation of these negative population data. We have observed that the boys born in various regions of pre-war Poland and settled with their parents in the new territories were of different height at the age of 7-18 years than those from the four other regions of Poland whose parents were not resettled. Also the average height of boys, those sons of the migrants who during post-war migration did not go to the west but settled in the central region of Poland, was greater than those who settled in the west of Poland. Our results indicate that among the migrants there was a considerable fraction of people who were physically weaker and less socially adapted in comparison to the rest of the Polish population and that these characteristics have been passed down to the subsequent generation.

[Does exposure to cigarette smoke influence girls maturation?]. / Czy ekspozycja na palenie papierosów w srodowisku rodzinnym wplywa na tempo rozwoju dziewczat?

A study of of 26008 school-girls in three biggest cities of Upper Silesia, revealed that 76% of the girls were passively exposed to tobacco smoke by their smoking parents. In the present paper it is shown that the age at menarche of the daughters of smoking mothers is lower than the age at menarche of daughters of mothers who do not smoke. This effect appears to be independent of the girl's family size, economic situation of the family or parental education. Similar influence of smoking father on the menarcheal age of the daughters could be detected only in groups of families with high SES.

Deceleration of age at menarche in Poland.

The purpose of this paper is to describe secular growth changes in age at menarche of girls in Poland during the past 40 years. For this purpose data obtained from four consecutive surveys conducted in 1955, 1966, 1978 and 1988 were analysed. Each cohort was selected from settlements: big cities, small towns (approximately 10,000 inhabitants) and villages. Data regarding schoolgirls aged 7-18 years were collected by the status quo method. It was found that after the continuous trend towards an earlier maturation of Polish girls from 1955 to 1978 a substantial slowing down, and even a reverse trend, was observed. The deceleration of the age at menarche is most marked among girls from small towns. The results seem to have been caused by the retardation of menarcheal age in social groups which in the previous examinations were the earliest maturers.

Quantitative hematological characteristics in MZ and DZ twins.

The level of several biochemical hematological characteristics was determined--using colorimetric methods--in a group of 111 twins, aged 16-22 years. Significant variance differences between MZ and DZ twin pairs were observed in metabolites and serum enzyme levels. The intrapair differences of the variance of ions and protein levels were comparable in MZ and DZ twins. The validity of quantitative determination of heterability of biochemical characteristics is discussed.

Social-class gradients in menarcheal age in Poland.

In a sample of approx. 19 000 Polish schoolgirls from the three largest cities of the Upper Silesia conurbation, menarcheal age was studied in relation to parental education (four levels) and father's occupation (12 groups). Menarcheal age tends to increase with decreasing parental education, although the gradient is not steep. When families below a certain level of economic standing are discarded from the best-educated and the least-well-educated groups, mean menarcheal age, surprisingly, decreases much more in the former than in the latter. Mean menarcheal ages for girls from different occupational groups range from 12.82 to 13.30 years and form the following sequence, in increasing order: managers--police--non-technical professionals--engineers, technicians and foremen--skilled industrial workers and small businessmen--unskilled workers--coal-miners. Mean menarcheal age for an occupational group is strongly dependent upon the group's socio-economic status, the latter being defined in terms of parental education, family income, family size, and dwelling conditions. However, daughters of men in the police force mature significantly earlier, and daughters of coal-miners significantly later, than would be expected from each group's rank in socio-economic status. The findings are compared with the results of other recent studies of social gradients in menarcheal age in Poland.

The final phase of growth in height.

Among 221 boys investigated, only 54% had the same (+/- 1 cm) body height at age 27 years as they had at age 19. Longitudinal observations of those boys indicate that the increment from 18 to 27 years is strongly dependent on skeletal maturation and even on such a distant event as age at peak height velocity. Average increment in stature was 2.13 cm, and the maximum increment was 7 cm. Late-maturing individuals are largely responsible for the differences in average stature observed in cross-sectional studies in the third decade of life.