Doctors find muscle-builder cream caused sex development ...( velop sexually during the first fewyea...),Health

"Number two, contact with these hormones could advance their bone maturity very rapidly, which would lead to a short-term increase in their growth rate but eventually they could wind up very short," he said.

A 3-year-old, for example, might grow rapidly for a year or so and be the biggest child in the class but then stop growing and spend his life as a very short adult, the physician said. When growth plates - the parts of bones that lengthen - evolve from cartilage to bone, no more skeletal growth occurs.

"We want to make it clear that we believe the father was not treating his son with testosterone," D'Ercole said. "This was an accident.

"Parents should be aware that androgens in both cream and pill forms are now widespread and that they present a potentially serious health threat to young children. If these substances are left lying around where kids might think they are candy or something else harmless, they could do permanent damage."

Most often, premature puberty in boys results from gonadotropin - a hormone produced by the pituitary gland - prematurely stimulating the testes to secrete androgens, which in turn trigger sexual development.

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Contact: David Williamson
David_Williamson@unc.edu
919-962-8596
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2-Aug-1999