Turner Syndrome is caused by the complete or partial absence of one of the two X chromosomes usually found in women. It effects approximately one in every 3000 women and is either diagnosed at the time of birth, or at the time of adolescence when menstruation fails to begin. It is indicated by minimal sexual development, including the failure of menstruation to begin, and the lack of breast development. Women with Turner Syndrome tend to be short in stature, and have very particular physical characteristics, which are frequently evident at birth. Turner Syndrome has most commonly been treated with estrogen therapy, as a means to encouraging the development of secondary sexual characteristics.
Growth hormone is at times given to girls to help a child achieve a greater height.
Women and girls with Turner Syndrome often have other health complications. The most common problems are associated with skeletal, kidney and cardiac anomalies. But these are anomalies with which a woman would be born, rather than ones she would develop later in life. If a woman with Turner Syndrome has, and this is most likely, been under the care of a doctor, she also should have had a complete physical examination which would have identified these problems early on in her life. The only conditions that she might develop later in life, but to which she is especially predisposed to as a person with Turner Syndrome, would be diabetes and Hashimoto's thyroiditis.