The Health Blog

In neonatal life, sex hormones circulating in the bloodstream are at a high level compared to that of later infancy and childhood. Prior to birth, hormone function depends upon maternal and placental endocrine activity, and upon the endocrine activity of the fetus itself. The period after birth is one of rapid transition from maternal and placental dependence to autonomous functioning.

From birth until the first seven to twelve months of age, there are sex differences in hormone concentrations. Testosterone levels are high in both boys and girls but higher in boys. In boys, there is a testosterone peak by the second or third month, followed by a gradual decrease to prepubertal levels by one year. In girls, the testosterone level rapidly declines to the prepubertal level by the second week of life. There is an increase in lutenizing hormone (LH) and follicular stimulating hormone (FSH) in both sexes during the first year, but girls have higher levels of FSH and boys of LH. Estrogen levels have not yet been ascertained for boys or girls.

Differences in endocrine function present at birth and in the neonatal period are not known to be related to psychosexual differentiation or to any aspect of behavioral development. Precise methods of measuring steroid levels by radioimmunoassay determinations are relatively recent; behavioral correlation studies have not been undertaken.

*15/187/5*

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