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H Lejarraga

Publications and source records attributed to H Lejarraga.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Short-term growth at adolescence in healthy girls.

UNLABELLED: In the last decade, most investigators found that growth measured on a daily or weekly basis is a non-linear process, but its precise pattern has not yet been fully determined. Data are particularly scarce during puberty. On this basis we evaluated the daily growth in 10 healthy girls during their adolescent growth spurt with replicated height measurements over a period of 128-150 days. The technical error of measurement in each girl varied between 0.08 and 0.12 cm. A jump-preserving smoothing technique based on the technical error with a hard rejection criterion was used. Growth was defined as any increment between two consecutive smoothed values greater than 6 times the standard deviation of the difference of two consecutive smoothed values under the non-growth (stasis) assumption. Steep changes in height were conventionally defined as any 1-day increment greater than 0.3 cm. RESULTS: All girls showed stasis periods, steep changes and days with a continuous growth with a wide range of daily increments in height. The number of stasis periods in each girl varied between three and seven, lasting between 7 and 22 consecutive days. The number of steep changes in each girl ranged between one and four with a mean amplitude between 0.37 and 0.52 cm. The sum of these steep changes calculated in each girl as a percentage of total growth during the study period ranged from 15.3 to 42.9%; the remaining growth was due to continuous growth. Rhythms or cycles were not found. CONCLUSION: Short-term growth during the pubertal growth spurt in these healthy girls is an irregular and discontinuous process, composed of three types of events: stasis, steep changes and continuous growth periods with a wide individual range of daily height increments.

Body Height↗

Age of menarche in urban Argentinian girls.

A cross-sectional study in La Plata city, Argentina, yielded a mean age of menarche in 6494 schoolgirls, of 12.53 +/- 0.05 years, standard deviation 1.22 years, obtained by probit analysis. These values show a relatively early age of menarche in Argentinian girls as compared to other populations.

Adolescent↗

Growth of Argentinian girls with Turner syndrome.

Growth data on 254 patients with Turner syndrome from Argentina-120 with XO karyotype and 134 with other chromosomal abnormalities-were analysed. Birth weight and height were significantly reduced. Ninety patients had received oestrogen treatment from a mean age of 14-0 years (SD 1.2) and 17 patients had spontaneous menarche. Patients who underwent spontaneous menarche had a small growth spurt. Final height was slightly higher (139.8 cm SD 5.6), though not significantly different from the mean adult height of the whole sample (137.9 cm SD 5.7). Mean adult height was 3.73 SD below mean of the normal local population. Mean height velocities from birth to maturity are very similar to those found in other samples. Distance standards were prepared by fitting a fifth-degree polynomial to the interpolated mean heights at each 0.5 year of age, and to the raw SD. Selected centiles were then calculated from the smoothed values. Differences between adult height in local Turner syndrome girls and local normal population are very similar to the same Turner-normal differences described in other communities. Standards presented here are useful for evaluating Turner syndrome patients from Argentina, and may also be used by those with similar growth pattern in their normal population.

Adolescent↗

Skeletal maturity of the hand and wrist of healthy Argentinian children aged 4-12 years, assessed by the TWII method.

One previously trained observer assessed skeletal maturity in a representative sample of 388 and 387 healthy girls and boys respectively from La Plata city, a predominantly university and administrative urban centre in Argentina. The staging system used was TWII and the scores were calculated from three sources: British, Spanish and Italian standards. Our sample showed a marked advancement in bone age with regard to chronological age when using British standards and, to a lesser extent, when applying the Spanish standards. Local mean bone ages were very similar to chronological ages when the Italian scores were used. Second-degree polynomials were adjusted to log10 scores for boys and girls, in order to obtain local values for bone age (BA) transformations. The same staging system should be used in clinical work in Argentina, with the corresponding changes in BA transformatons. A marked advancement of carpal BAs with regard to RUS BAs was found, from age 5 onwards, in both sexes. Mean differences and SD of RUS-minus-carpal BA were 1.28, SD 1.08 and 1.18, SD 1.09 years for girls and boys respectively. These differences have not been described before, and require further investigation.

Age Determination by Skeleton↗

Height velocity in Argentinean girls with Turner's syndrome.

Height velocities from birth to maturity derived from 1,049 height increments measured over intervals 0.85-1.15 years were studied from a sample of 187 patients with Turner's syndrome (TS) diagnosed on the basis of karyotype. Length of follow up in each girl varied from 1.0 to 11.0 years. Cross-sectional analysis showed a relatively stable growth velocity during pubertal ages. However, longitudinal analysis of individual growth curves showed the existence of a small growth spurt in 37 out of 47 girls with available data during pubertal years. Mean peak height velocity (PHV) of this spurt was 5.7 cm/year, SD 1.34; mean age at PHV was 12.66 years, SD 1.70. Selected percentiles were calculated using the least mean squares (LMS) method. Results show that a small growth spurt in girls with TS may be more frequent than previously thought.

Adolescent↗