Effects of 3 years of growth hormone therapy in short normal children.

The effect of 3 years of growth hormone (GH) treatment on growth rate, predicted height, carbohydrate and metabolic status, and thyroid function was studied in 16 short prepubertal children growing with a normal pretreatment growth rate. The height velocity SDS increased from a pretreatment value of -0.44 +/- 0.33 (mean +/- SD) to a value of +2.20 +/- 1.03 during the first year of treatment. It was maintained at a value above zero over the subsequent 2 years. By the end of the third year of treatment, the predicted final height had increased by 6.8 cm in the boys and by 4.2 cm in the girls (p less than 0.001 and p less than 0.01, respectively). Increasing the dose of GH on a body surface area basis reduced the deceleration of growth observed during the second year of treatment, leading to an improvement in height prognosis over that year. Glucose homoeostasis was achieved initially at the expense of an elevation in fasting serum insulin concentration, but this had returned to pretreatment values by the end of the second year of therapy.