Sexual maturation in third and fourth decades, after nutritional rehabilitation by enteral feeding
1987
Feigelman, T. | Frisch, R.E. | MacBurney, M. | Schiff, I. | Wilmore, D.
A case study of the sexual maturation in three developmentally disabled patients is discussed. A 29 year old male and two women, ages 24 and 29 years old were tube fed to reverse long-term nutritional inadequacy resulting from disordered swallowing. Unexpected sexual maturation, at prepubertal body sizes, was observed after weight gain, which improved patients' body weights from that of a 4 year old to that of a 9 year old child. In female patients it was demonstrated that primary amenorrhea was reversible as late as the fourth decade and the ability to ovulate was retained. In the male patient, spermatozoa were completely absent in the ejaculate, although genitalia had grown to normal size and testosterone levels were in the normal range. It is not known if long-term undernutrition affects the male differently from the females or whether the male had some unknown physiologic cause for the azoospermia, unrelated to undernutrition.
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