Divergent responses to kisspeptin in children with delayed puberty

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Kisspeptin-10 in this clinical trial publication.

Eleven boys and four girls were admitted overnight to assess LH secretion at baseline, after a single intravenous bolus of kisspeptin, and after a single intravenous bolus of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH).

Why It Was Studied

The neuropeptide kisspeptin stimulates luteinizing hormone (LH) secretion in healthy adults but not in adults with idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism.

The researchers hypothesized that, in children presenting with delayed or stalled puberty, kisspeptin would elicit LH secretion in those children found on detailed nighttime neuroendocrine profiling to have evidence of emerging reproductive endocrine function.

Who Took Part

The study group was 5 men.

The age groups tagged for this paper are teenagers and adults, both men and women.

Subjects then received exogenous pulsatile GnRH for 6 days and returned for a second visit to measure responses to kisspeptin and GnRH after this pituitary "priming." Responses to kisspeptin and GnRH were also measured in 5 healthy men.

How the Study Was Run

The timeline in the abstract includes 6 days.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Administration, Intravenous, Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone, Intercellular Signaling Peptides and Proteins, Kisspeptins, Luteinizing Hormone, Outcome Assessment, Health Care and Peptide Hormones.

Author keywords: Neuroendocrine regulation and Reproductive Biology.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a clinical trial of Kisspeptin-10 in 5 men over 6 days.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2018 (JCI insight), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Kisspeptin-10 compound page, all human trials.