Height correlations between parents and mature offspring in normal subjects and in subjects with Turner's and Klinefelter's and other syndromes.

Abstract

The correlations for stature between parents and grown-up offspring in 90 normal males and 116 normal females have been compared with similar correlations obtained in 27 adult males with Klinefelter's syndrome, 33 adult females with Turner's syndrome and in 75 adult patients with Down's syndrome. There was close similarity between the findings in the patients with sex chromosomal disorders and in normal subjects, a roughly constant amount of height being gained or lost through the chromosomal abnormalities. However the genetic pattern was lost in patients with Down's syndrome. In males with idiopathic precocious puberty and in untreated females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, the parent-offspring correlations were not normal. In females with idiopathic precocious puberty they approximated normal values. The first two are pathological conditions of varying severity, whilst the majority of girls diagnosed as suffering from precocious puberty represent the extreme variant of normal.