STUDIES ON MATURATION IN PUBERAL GIRLS

Abstract

With preschool girls and elementary and junior high school girls, the recent trend in menarche, physical development, changes in uriuary hormones and oral mucous cells were investigated with the following results :1) Average age of menarche for 457 junior high school girls was 12 years and 3.8 months, somewhat younger than the hitherto reported.2) Menarche occurred most frequently in August, followed by April and January, and infrequently in February, May and September. This is nearly in agreement with the early reports. In term of season, summer ranked the highest in the incidence of menarche, followed by spring, winter and autumn in the descending order.3) The recent menstruant rate as investigated with 9, 285 elementary and junior high school in Maebashi, was 0.9 % in the 4th elementary school year, 6.4 % in the 5th year, and 23.6 % in the 6th year, and 58.4 % in the 1st junior high school year (twice that in the 6th elementary school year), 87.5 % in the 2nd year, and 96.5 % in the 3rd year. The majority of the menstruants in the 2nd and 3rd junior high school years had menarche in the 1st junior high school year.4) Physical developments in 106 junior high school girls were compared between menstruants and non-menstruants. Stature, body weight and chest circumference were all greater in average in the menstruant group, and the differences were statistically significant.5) Average physical development at entrance to junior high school was sought with total 519 girls of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd year, and it was found nearly constant in the recent years, 6) Urinary FSH, which was low in early childhood increased with age. There was significant difference in this value between ages of above and below 10 years, but not between pre- and postmenarche in ages above 10 years.7) It was newly found that urinary LH attained the level of ovulatory phase of adult women already in girls of 2 to 5 years, that it was low from 6 years until menarche and that it again increased after menarche.8) Urinary estrogen increased with age, becoming abruptly higher from 12-13 years. No significant difference was seen between pre- and postmenarche.9) Urinary 17 KS increased, like urinary estrogen, with age. At the age of 13 years it attained the level of the mature woman or sometimes even surpassed it.10) In normal mature and postmenopausal women, parallel findings were obtained between vaginal and buccal smears. However, gingival smears of all the cases showed numerous highly cornified anucleated cells so that it was difficult to appraise difference.11) Examination of maturatiou index on the basis of buccal smear revealed parabasal cells, a small nunber of superficial cells and numerous intermediate cells in school girls (aged 8-9 years). However in puberal girls (aged 12-13 years) before and after menarche, no para-basal cells were observed, while superficial cells significantly increased over that in school childhood, accompanied by sufficient estrogen activity. In contrast with this, gingival smear showed numcrous anucleated cells in both school childhood and puberty, and not any consistent tendency as did buccal smear. It can therefore be concluded that buccal smear, but not gingival smear, can indicate approximate estrogen activity, and that it can be used for the prediction of menarche.