Studies have indicated that the onset of puberty is occurring earlier for both girls and boys.1,2 Historically, the age at which the most significant height change occurs, known as peak height velocity or growth spurt, had been observed to be around age 11.5 for girls and age 13.5 for boys in 1998.3
To understand whether the typical age of growth spurts has shifted with the changing onset of puberty, we studied 11,282,238 pediatric patients aged 2 to 18 who had their height measured during an outpatient face-to-face visit between 2010 and 2023.
We found that the median growth spurt for girls after early childhood growth occurred at 10.5 years old, one year younger than previously reported, as illustrated in Figure 1. Similarly, for boys, we observed that the median growth spurt age was also nearly a year younger, around 12.8 years old.
Interestingly, we found that conditions that affect stature, like Down syndrome and achondroplasia, do not affect the median age of growth spurt for girls or boys.
