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| |  Growth-Hormone Treatment Effective In Short But Healthy Children STANFORD, CT -- Feb. 18, 1999 -- Doctors have long used injections of human growth hormone to treat children who are short because of abnormally low levels of this growth-stimulating substance. But now, a decade-long study led by a Stanford researcher shows that the same treatment also stimulates growth in short but healthy children. Stanford professor of pediatrics Raymond Hintz, MD, and his colleagues gave regular injections of growth hormone to 121 children who ranked in the bottom three percent of their age group in height. All of the children had normal levels of growth hormone in their blood but showed below-average growth rates. The treatment spanned between two and 10 years, depending on the age of the child. To determine whether the growth hormone made a difference, the researchers estimated how tall each child would have grown based on the average height of his or her parents. Of the 80 children who reached their adult size by the end of the study, boys surpassed their predicted height by an average of five centimetres -- roughly two inches. The girls grew nearly six centimetres over the predicted values. A comparison of the treated children to a comparable group of children who received no growth hormone gave similar results. Treated boys outgrew the untreated boys by 9.2 centimetres (about three-and-a-half inches). For girls, the disparity was 5.7 centimetres. At present, growth hormone is approved for use only when the child lacks sufficient natural growth hormone, has an aberration of the chromosomes called Turner's syndrome, or has failing kidneys and is awaiting a transplant. "The difficult questions of the ethical and financial justification of growth hormone treatment for these children with severe short stature must be faced squarely," the authors write.
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