During the past year we have studied gonadotropin and inhibin pulsatility in 28 normal pubertal children. In addition, we have screened 31 children who will be studied in the next three months. Preliminary results show that there is inhibin pulsatility in children in early and late puberty. It appears that the mean levels of inhibin are different in males and females. We were able to analyze the inhibin pulse frequency of the older children and have now begun to study the smaller children in early puberty. In addition to finding inhibin pulsatility, it appears that both FSH and LH pulses are temporally related. The relation of inhibin to LH is one that our laboratory has recently reported in the rat. Now that we know that inhibin levels are measurable in puberty and that there is.pulsatility, we will complete the work on the normal children and begin to study children with abnormal puberty. In addition, we plan to amend our protocol to allow us to study inhibin pulsatility longitudinally In children throughout puberty. We also plan to extend our work to study women throughout the menstrual cycle and then to study women with several forms of Infertility, such as those with an inadequate luteal phase and those with polycystic ovaries. We would also like to study a subset of women with premenstrual syndrome. In our studies of children with precocious puberty, we have studied 11 girls with precocious puberty and have enrolled children in the protocol. Four girls have completed the initial six months of the protocol. Our numbers are too small at the present time to report any hard data. We have also developed a new immunofluorescence system for our research studies. The system is extremely sensitive and allows us to study the extremely low hormone levels seen in children in early puberty.
