Etiologic factors and clinical characteristics of Turkish adolescent girls diagnosed with hirsutism

Abstract

AimHirsutism is the male type terminal hair growth in androgen sensitive body areas of the female gender. There is a limited number of studies that involves only hirsutic adolescents. In this study, clinical and laboratory char-acteristics of hirsutism in Turkish adolescents were evaluated.Methods174 hirsutic adolescent girls were assessed for menarche age, men-struation cycle, family history, body mass index z-scores, modified Ferriman-Gallwey (mFG) scores, hair development and distributions and laboratory findings.ResultsMean age was 15.4±1.5 years. The cases were identified as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) 57.4%, idiopathic hirsutism (IH) 29.3% and adrenal hirsutism (AH) 13.2%. The mean ages, hair development onset and menarche ages of the groups were similar. Mild, moderate and severe hirsutism were determined in 132, 39 and 3 cases respectively. Maximum hair development was observed at the thigh, upper arm and lower back ar-eas; minimum hair development was observed in the upper abdomen, upper back and chest areas., The menstrual irregularity, obesity and LH/FSH ratio were significantly higher while SHBG was significantly lower in the PCOS.ConclusionPCOS is the most frequent reason for adolescent hirsutism with menstrual irregularity, mild hair growth and obesity. Regular menstruation suggests firstly idiopathic hirsutism. mFG score values of the thigh, upper arm and lower back areas may provide a preunderstanding for hirsutism. Upper lip area’s where frequent epilation is applied may be deceptive con-cerning scoring.

Keywords

Additional Information

Publisher’s Note
Bayrakol MP remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional and institutional claims.

Rights and Permissions

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). To view a copy of the license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

View full license details →