EDITORS NOTE: This release coincides with publication of February 18 issue
of The New England Journal of Medicine
Growth-hormone treatment is effective
in short but healthy children, study shows
STANFORD -- 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
3 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 centimeters
-- roughly two inches. And the girls grew nearly 6 centimeters 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 centimeters (about 3 1/2 inches). For girls, the disparity
was 5.7 centimeters.
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.
Hintz's collaborators were Alex Roche, PhD, of Wayne State University and
Kenneth Attie, MD, and Joyce Baptista, PhD, of Genentech, a South San Francisco
biotechnology company.
The research was funded by grants from Genentech and the Public Health Service.
Hintz has served as a paid consultant to Genentech.