3-year-old girl goes into puberty
Doctors say the three-year-old girl has developed signs of adolescence and appears biologically capable of conceiving. Photo by Ali Mambule
What you need to know:
A consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist terms her condition as precocious puberty, meaning the child has developed before her age.
Lwengo- At the age of only three, a girl from Lwengo District (names withheld) could theoretically become the youngest mother the world has ever seen after she went into an unprecedented puberty cycle.
She menstruates and has pubic hair and developed breasts. The condition has thrown her parents in a dilemma.
“We thought that this was a usual abnormality among children. We applied local herbs thinking that it will quickly disappear but it did not,” the mother, Hadija Kobusingye, told Sunday Monitor.
The little girl was born to one Kobusingye of Kyazanga Town in Lwengo District in late 2012. The mother says she started developing breasts when she was only eight months old.
As the breasts continued to grow, she took her to a clinic in Kyazanga Town where the medical attendant gave her seven injections and assured them the problem would disappear.
“Instead of the breasts disappearing, the girl started developing pubic hair shortly after turning one year,” Kobusingye narrated.
At the age of about two, she started menstruation.
“The first time I saw blood stains on her clothes I suspected she had been defiled but when I examined her, cleaned her and gave her another clean cloth, I still saw blood and realised it was flowing naturally out of her private parts,” Madina Nanjobe, the girl’s grandmother, said. “I then concluded that she was in her periods which alarmed us.”
Beginning of menstruation
The grandmother says in the beginning the menstruation was erratic but for the last five months, the girl has been menstruating for four days every month, according to Nanjobe.
The family was then advised to see a specialised doctor in women’s health and reproductive issues. That is how they went to consult Dr Gonzanga Ssenyondo, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Eden Community Medicare Centre in Nyendo, Masaka Municipality.
Dr Ssenyondo said his medical investigations on the girl revealed that she has already developed signs of adolescence and appears biologically capable of conceiving if she engages in live sex with a man.
“According to history, this can be the youngest case from that of Brazil where an eight-year-old girl conceived,” Dr Ssenyondo advised the girl’s parents to protect her from possible defilement.
“Although she may become pregnant, she is still too small to keep a baby in her womb or even deliver it safely,” the doctor said.
He termed her condition as precocious puberty. “It means that the child has developed before her age. Usually we expect children to go into puberty at the age of between 12 and 14 although it can be a little earlier at around nine or 10.”
“At that age, the girl’s ovaries have started being active very fast. But this girl could also be developing pituitary tumor which is a some small organ in the brain. It is one of the systems with the hypothalamus which regulates reproductive development especially in females,” Dr Ssenyondo explained.
He referred the girl to Mulago, the national referral hospital in Kampala, for basic investigations like CT scan, and an MRI scan to look at her brain, hypothalamus and pituitary examination to ascertain whether there is no tumor. He said the more the tumor grows, the more the girl will get problems bigger than what is visible now.
Dr Ssenyondo also said there is need to carry out endoctrinological tests to examine the girl’s reproductive system, make detailed abdominal scan to find out how far her reproductive organs have developed and check whether there any infection or pathology because at times it may just be the ovaries which are acting very fast. He ruled out genetic disorders which he said has never occurred in the family.
What are the effects of this problem?
“If one develops a brain tumor and it grows, the worst effect is death since it causes intracranial pressure, a brain disease. But if it is approached in a laissez faire manner, the child will not achieve her full growth potential,” Dr Ssenyondo observed.
“When those hormones are allowed to circulate in the body, the bones will close the epiphytical plates when it is very early and the child may stop growing at that height where she currently is. She may appear like a dwarf.”
Doctor's recommendations
“If she develops a pituitary tumour, she may be subjected to more complicated problems especially when she develops a pituitary gland. She could now be sitting on a time bomb and she requires a deeper investigation in a very short time to save her from more complications.
But it is not yet too late even if the parents delayed to seek professional assistance,”
Dr Gonzanga Ssenyondo, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist
Other cases
In July last year, a boy in Pece Division in Gulu Municipality who was aged three then, was reported to have gone into puberty when he was just six months old. He had developed a deep voice and public hair.
The boy was subjected to several endocrine tests at Gulu hospital which established that he had high large quantities of the male sex hormone- testosterone- which were higher than those of an adult.
He weighed 27kg, which is an abnormal weight for a person of his age. The bone test indicated that he was 9-10 years old, implying he was mature by about seven years above his age.
