In a recent study published in Nature Genetics, an international team of scientists identified about 400 genomic regions associated with age at menarche - the first occurrence of a menstrual cycle in women and an important event in female puberty. Age of onset of puberty is affected by many variables including genetic, nutritional, and environmental factors that may be associated with risk of cancer later in life. Researchers used genome-wide data collected from 330,000 women to find signals linked to age at menarche. Some of these signals were traced to genes expressed in neural tissues or near paternally imprinted genes. The data also showed an inverse association between puberty onset and breast, endometrial, and prostate cancers. These findings reveal there is a lot of genetic complexity in the regulation of puberty timing. They also provide important clues about susceptibility to sex steroid-sensitive cancers in women and men.
Full details of the study can be found in the Nature Genetics publication: Day etal., Nature Genetics 49, 834-841 (2017); doi:10.1038/ng.3841 or in the GenomeWeb article linked below.
