Swedish young men who went through late puberty during adolescence are more likely to use healthcare services later in life, according to research presented at the 62nd Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting in Liverpool. The findings of this long-term study suggest that delayed puberty in boys may have harmful effects on their health in adulthood and could potentially lead to new follow-up healthcare routines in the future. Puberty in boys typically starts between the ages of 9 and 14.
However, about 2% of boys have delayed puberty, in which puberty does not begin by age 14. In most cases, delayed puberty is constitutional – a pattern of growth and development that runs in families – and these boys are generally healthy who will eventually go through puberty in time. Nevertheless, delayed puberty can lead to feelings of sadness and anxiety in boys and their long-term health outcomes have not been adequately investigated.
In this study, researchers from Örebro University and Karolinska Institutet examined 1,245 Swedish men, born between 1991 and 1993, who were diagnosed with delayed puberty at the ages of 14-17 years old. They followed these men from the age of 18 until they reached about 30 years old, comparing them to 12,450 men without early or delayed puberty, and found that men who went through delayed puberty were 1.05 times more likely to visit a hospital, 1.
2 times more likely to be admitted to hospital and almost twice more likely to be pr.