Osmosis video - Precocious and delayed puberty: Clinical

Precocious puberty, also known as early puberty, is the onset of puberty before age 8 in females or age 9 in males. The treatment for precocious puberty is a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist, which suppresses the effect of GnRH on the pituitary gland and helps prevent the further progression of puberty. Delayed puberty, on the other hand, is when the secondary sexual characteristics are incompletely developed or absent by age 12 years in females and by age 14 years in males. Treatment for delayed puberty involves hormone replacement therapy.