XForms Dialog Some text here function loaded() { document.myDialog = new YAHOO.widget.Dialog("myDialog", { modal: true, close: true, visible: false, draggable: false, fixedcenter: true, constraintoviewport: true, underlay: "shadow" }); document.myDialog.render(); document.myPanel = new YAHOO.widget.ResizePanel("control-id--help-div", { width: "30em", fixedcenter: true, constraintoviewport: true, underlay: "shadow", close: true, visible: false, draggable: true, modal: false} ); document.myPanel.render(); document.myPanel.show(); } Dialog title Please complete the form Name: Hide Show dialog Text: Label of control - Help Preschool Puberty, and a Search for the Causes By DARSHAK M. SANGHAVI Parents often think their children grow up too quickly, but few are prepared for the problem that Dr. Michael Dedekian and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Medical School reported recently. At the annual Pediatric Academic Society meeting in May in San Francisco, they presented a report that described how a preschool-age girl, and then her kindergarten-age brother, mysteriously began growing pubic hair. These cases were not isolated; in 2004, pediatric endocrinologists from San Diego reported a similar cluster of five children. It turns out that there have been clusters of cases in which children have prematurely developed signs of puberty, outbreaks similar to epidemics of influenza or environmental poisonings. In 1979, the medical journal The Lancet described an outbreak of breast enlargement among hundreds of Italian schoolchildren, probably caused by estrogen contamination of beef and poultry. Similar epidemics in Puerto Rico and Haiti were tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the 1980�s. Increasingly � though the science is still far from definitive and the precise number of such cases is highly speculative � some physicians worry that children are at higher risk of early puberty as a result of the increasing prevalence of certain drugs, cosmetics and environmental contaminants, called �endocrine disruptors,� that can cause breast growth, pubic hair development and other symptoms of puberty. Most commonly, outbreaks of puberty in children are traced to accidental drug exposures from products that are used incorrectly. Dr. Dedekian�s first patient was evaluated for possible genetic endocrine problems and a rare brain tumor before the cause of her puberty was discovered. It turned out that her testosterone level was almost 100 times normal, in the range of an adult man. The same problem affected her brother. The doctors realized that the girl�s father was using a concentrated testosterone skin cream bought from an Internet compounding pharmacy for cosmetic and sexual performance purposes. From normal skin contact with their father, the children absorbed the testosterone, which caused pubic hair growth and genital enlargement. The boy, in particular, also developed some aggressive behavior problems. Sex hormones are potent because they are easily absorbed through the skin and resist degradation better than many other hormones. Unlike protein-based hormones like insulin, sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen are technically steroids, meaning they are derived from cholesterol.