Sexual abuse may accelerate puberty in young girls

Girls who experience childhood sexual abuse are likely to physically mature and hit puberty up to twelve months earlier than their peers, a new study has found.
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University in the US compared the pubescent trajectories of about 84 females with a sexual abuse history and 89 of their non-abused counterparts.
The subjects were tracked from pre-puberty to full maturity based on a numeric index of ratings that corresponds with the physical progression of puberty known as Tanner staging.
Researchers focused on breast and pubic hair development as two separate mile markers for pubescent change.
Subjects were placed somewhere from one (prepubescent) to five (full maturity) on the Tanner index and their Tanner number and age were mapped out and recorded over time.

Researchers found that young women with sexual abuse histories were far more likely to transition into higher puberty stages an entire year before their non-abused counterparts when it came to pubic hair growth, and a full eights months earlier in regards to breast development.

"Though a year's difference may seem trivial in the grand scheme of a life, this accelerated maturation has been linked to concerning consequences, including behavioural and mental health problems and reproductive cancers," said Jennie Noll of Pennsylvania State University.
The body is timed so that physical and developmental changes occur in tandem, assuring that as a child physically changes, they have adequate psychological growth to cope with mature contexts, researchers said.

"High-stress situations, such as childhood sexual abuse, can lead to increased stress hormones that jump-start puberty ahead of its standard biological timeline," Noll said.
"When physical maturation surpasses psychosocial growth in this way, the mismatch in timing is known as maladaptation," she added.
The study was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.