“To study the character of sexual development in boys residing in industrial cities or in the country”
(research supervisor – Doctor of Medical Sciences, professor O.I. Plekhova, 2008−2010)
The research work, carried out according to the program “Health of the nation”, made it possible to define some tendencies in the course of sexual maturation in boys in the contemporary social environment, namely an earlier onset ( from 1 to 1.5 yrs) of pubertal changes in the genital organs, as well as the development of secondary sexual characters.
Research object: puberty in boys (n=1569) residing in Kharkiv and in boys (n=1225), aged 10-18, living in rural locality.
Objective: to work out age-related standards of sexual development in boysresiding in an industrial city or in the country.
Methods: clinical, radiological, radioimmunological, immunofermental, and genetic.
Theoretical and practical results: current tendencies and some peculiarities have been established in the sexual development of boys as dependent on the place of their residence. There are revealed certain relationships between the rates of sexual development and body weight. Sexual development standards for boys have been worked out, and centile normograms for sexual development characters have been designed (testicle circumference, penis length, and masculinization index) in the study for inhabitants of an industrial city and for country boys. The incidence and structure of sexual development disorders has been established in adolescents under examination. It has been proved that the most widespread pathology of puberty is its delay, which has been established in 5,4 % of town-dwellers and 5,2 % of country boys, aged 13-17. The inverted puberty is revealed in 10-12 year-old boys in 4,5 and 7,3 %, respectively. On the basis of complex examination there have been defined clinical, hormonal and genealogical characteristics of adolescents with pathological puberty.
Novelty: a novel technology has been suggested for estimating sexual development and its disorders in boys with using percentile tables of sexual development characters, taking into consideration the regions of their residence.
Effectiveness: an increase in reproductive potential of adolescents by monitoring human sexual system formation and timely revealing pathological states.
Application fields: endocrinology, pediatrics, and andrology.
