Brain structure alterations in girls with central precocious puberty.

PURPOSE: Central precocious puberty (CPP) is puberty that occurs at an unusually early age with several negative psychological outcomes. There is a paucity of data on the morphological characteristics of the brain in CPP. This study aimed to determine the structural differences in the brain of patients with CPP.

METHODS

We performed voxel- and surface-based morphometric analyses of 1.5 T T1-weighted brain images scanned from 15 girls with CPP and 13 age-matched non-CPP controls (NC). All patients with CPP were diagnosed by gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) stimulation test. The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data were evaluated using Levene's test for equality of variances and a two-tailed unpaired t-test for equality of means. False discovery rate correction for multiple comparisons was applied using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure.

RESULTS

Morphometric analyses of the brain scans identified 33 candidate measurements. Subsequently, increased thickness of the right precuneus was identified in the patients with CPP using general linear models and visualizations of cortical thickness with a t-statistical map and a random field theory map.

CONCLUSION

The brain scans of the patients with CPP showed specific morphological differences to those of the control. The features of brain morphology in CPP identified in this study could contribute to further understanding the association between CPP and detrimental psychological outcomes.