University of Wisconsin researchers have discovered a link between large amounts of caloric intake and early onset of puberty in girls.

Yesterday, the National Primate Research Center at UW released results from its recent study that found this link through its research on primates. 

Researcher Joe Kurian said after careful observation, the scientists discovered a significant decrease in the age of puberty over the last 150 years. More specifically, at one point girls would undergo puberty between the ages of 17 and 18. Now, some girls enter puberty around the age of 12. 

“This can be very traumatic physically and psychologically to a young girl who is already showing signs of being a woman at age eight rather than age 12,” Ei Terasawa, professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine and Public Health, said in a statement. 

Kurian said he, Terewasa, researcher Ricki Colman and colleagues wanted to determine why exactly this decrease has happened. Based on 30 years of research, they developed the theory that caloric intake accelerates the body’s growth, thus accelerating puberty, according to the statement. 

Being that rhesus macaque monkeys, the subject of the researcher’s work, have similar reproductive and developmental organs to humans, the group was able to test its theory on the monkeys at the Primate Center located in Madison. 

According to the statement, research from scientists has shown the only difference between the macaque monkeys and humans is that the monkeys age faster, making the process of monitoring their caloric intake quicker and more efficient. 

As for the UW study, the statement said the team of researchers fed a group of 12-month-old macaque monkeys with two different diets: one including an increased amount of calories and the other a control diet. The team began its study in January 2011. 

They monitored the monkeys daily, feeding them their allotted diets. After six months of observation, Kurian and team determined that calories do have an impact on early maturity. Kurian said these results came 12 months earlier than anticipated, however, solidifying their theory that increased caloric intake leads to early puberty. 

They observed this trend through raised levels of the hormones leptin and IGF-1, Terasawa said in the statement. Kurian said the results provide for more of a reason to closely administer children’s eating habits. 

He said too much caloric intake does not only increase timing of maturity but also brings about metabolic diseases in adulthood, including type II diabetes, heart disease and cancer. While some may associate larger caloric intake with obesity, Kurian said it is important to understand that the animals on an increased caloric diet were by no means obese, just merely larger animals in size.

As for the future, he said the team of researchers does not plan on ending its research in the field. 

“Our next stage of the research is for us to understand how the high fat diet changes your genetic makeup,” Kurian said. 

He said by ingesting large sums of fat and calories, the genes in a specific part of the brain are changed, and the researchers hope to discover what exactly those genes are.