Treating abnormally short children with growth hormone can increase their adult height, even in if they are not found to be growth-hormone deficient, according to a team of Swedish researchers who followed children for 20 years.
Nov. 6, 2008 -- Treating abnormally short children with growth hormone can increase their adult height, even in if they are not found to be growth-hormone deficient, according to a team of Swedish researchers who followed children for 20 years.
In a group of 151 children, the average height gain in those given the higher of two growth hormone doses was about 3 inches.
Doctors have known for years that giving growth hormone, which is naturally secreted by the pituitary gland, helps children who are known to be deficient in the hormone. But whether giving the hormone to children of short stature whose growth hormone levels are not deficient proves effective has not been known.
The children studied by the Swedish team had short stature due to other causes, such as idiopathic short stature (ISS), a condition in which laboratory tests, including a test to check levels of growth hormone, are normal and doctors can't pinpoint easily a specific cause for the lack of height. Others were small for gestational age, or born small. The shortest 3% of children fall outside the bounds of what is generally viewed as "normal" growth.