The research linked a therapy in which oestrogen was given to tall adolescent girls to reduce their adult height to decreased fertility in later life. The use of oestrogens to reduce the potential height of tall adolescent girls began more than half a century ago and has been used in the USA, Europe and Australia.
The findings also have implications for understanding reproductive biology. The suggestion that oestrogen exposure during puberty might program reproductive potential in later life opens new opportunities for understanding female fertility.
An eight-member research team, of whom three are current staff members of La Trobe's Mother and Child Health Research Centre (MCHR), and three are former members, has published the result of their project in the British medical journal, The Lancet.
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