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that substantial changes in the tempo of puberty might have in various health
parameters later on life. While the progress of our knowledge of the (patho)
physiology of puberty has been astonishing, the occurrence of very recent,
exciting developments, regarding the identification of novel neuropeptide
pathways (such as kisspeptins and NKB) and molecular mechanisms (such
as epigenetics and miRNA pathways) involved in the control of pubertal
maturation, allows us to predict that much research activity will concentrate
in these and related areas in the coming years; efforts that are expected to
further clarify one of the most intriguing and complex developmental phe-
nomena in the lifespan of any individual.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is indebted with the members of the research team at the Physiology Section of
the University of Cordoba, who actively participated in the generation of experimental data
discussed herein. The work from the author's laboratory summarized in this chapter was
supported by grants BFU 2008-00984 and BFU2011-25021 (Ministerio de Econom´ay
Competitividad, Spain; co-funded with EU FEDER funds), Project PI042082 (Ministerio
de Sanidad, Spain), Project P08-CVI-03788 (Junta de Andaluc´a, Spain), and EU research
contract DEER FP7-ENV-2007-1. CIBER is an initiative of Instituto de Salud Carlos III
(Ministerio de Sanidad, Spain).
Disclosure statement:
The author has nothing to disclose.
REFERENCES
