Girls had their growth spurts earlier, at an average age of 11.5, while boys spurted on average at age 13.5
Health News: In the study, which included more than 6,000 British children, researchers found that kids who experienced their growth spurts — which occur around the age of puberty — late had lower than average bone density in young adulthood.
“Teens who mature later than their peers tend to have lower bone density on average as they grow and so they are likely to have a risk of breaking a bone,” said the study’s lead author Ahmed Elhakeem, an epidemiologist at the University of Bristol. “These later maturing teens did catch up to some degree with early maturing teenager in terms of bone strength, but they continued to have lower bone strength after they finished growing and became adults, so they may also be at increased risk for osteoporosis in later life.”
Finding which teens might be at risk of lower bone density is important because “peak bone mass at the end of growth is thought to be an important determinant of later-life risk of fracture and osteoporosis,” Elhakeem and his colleagues note in JAMA Network Open. “For example, bone remodeling simulations showed that a 10 per cent increase in bone mineral density would delay osteoporosis by 13 years.” To take a closer look at how the timing of kids’ growth spurts might impact their eventual bone density, the researchers turned to the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a study that recruited all pregnant women who were residing in the area served by three National Health Service authorities in southwest England who were expected to give birth between April 1991 and December 1992..
