CONCLUSIONS Growth hormone therapy in children with idiopathic short stature seems to be effective in partially reducing the deficit in height as adults , although the magnitude of effectiveness is on average less than that achieved in other conditions for which growth hormone is licensed .
OBJECTIVE To systematic ally determine the impact of growth hormone therapy on adult height of children with idiopathic short stature .
Final height after growth hormone therapy in non-growth-hormone-deficient children with short stature.
We report the effect of growth hormone ( GH ) treatment for 4 to 10 years in 15 prepubertal non-GH-deficient short children ( 10 boys , 5 girls , aged 7.4 to 13.2 years ) . In 7 patients , GH was administered at a dosage of 0.5 U/kg per week ( group 1 : 4 boys , 3 girls ) and in 8 patients ( group 2 : 6 boys , 2 girls ) at a dosage of 1.0 U/kg per week . After the first year , mean linear growth velocity had significantly increased in both groups . The increase in growth velocity was sustained during the first 4 years and then declined to pretreatment values in the majority of subjects . Treatment with GH did not induce an earlier onset of puberty , but there was a tendency toward faster skeletal maturation . The mean final height st and ard deviation score ( SDS ) was similar in the two groups and was significantly higher than the height SDS for chronologic age before treatment , but it did not differ from mean pretreatment predicted adult height SDS nor from mean target height SDS in both groups . Final height was significantly correlated with target height in both groups . These preliminary observations indicate that GH treatment does not generally increase final height over target height in short non-GH-deficient children
CONCLUSIONS Growth hormone therapy in children with idiopathic short stature seems to be effective in partially reducing the deficit in height as adults , although the magnitude of effectiveness is on average less than that achieved in other conditions for which growth hormone is licensed .
OBJECTIVE To systematic ally determine the impact of growth hormone therapy on adult height of children with idiopathic short stature .