Did you know that short stature is a disease?
Why can’t children grow taller despite good nutrition? Why is it possible for a child to be short even if his parents are tall? Is height determined by genetics? Modern medical research has proven that genetics is one third of the factors that determine height.
Why are many children’s height inadvertently delayed by their parents? The survey found that 97% of parents of children with short stature recognize their child’s short height, but only 1.6% of parents realize that it may be caused by some disease. Parents who do not know enough about the disease and lack basic knowledge (such as the average height of each age group and the cause of the disease) account for 41.9%; those who do not think that short stature is a disease, but mistakenly believe that their children are late growing and will grow taller later account for 32.3%; those who know that treatment is needed, but the cost of drugs is too high to afford 29%; those who believe in calcium supplementation and height increase advertisements and buy height increase or health care drugs for their children account for 16.1%; those who do not pay attention to their children’s height and do not give them regular checkups account for 12%. The percentage of parents who do not pay attention to their children’s height and do not check their children regularly is 12.9%; the percentage of parents who do not know the average height of their children’s age is 56.9%.
Nearly half of the parents interviewed attributed their children’s short stature to “late development” and “picky and partial eating”. They took measures such as increasing nutrition, strengthening physical exercise, taking vitamin tablets for calcium and increasing health supplements, etc. Even more than 60% of parents did not take any measures to deal with their children’s short stature. Most of the parents did not think it was necessary to take their children to the hospital for examination to determine the cause of their short height.
At the same time, statistics of children seen nationwide show that 46.4% of children with growth hormone deficiency and 27.0% of children with idiopathic dwarfism were seen. These children can be treated effectively with recombinant human growth hormone drugs.
Short stature is a disease whose main cause is the lack of growth hormone secreted by the body or the insufficient activity of the secreted growth hormone. Genetics accounts for only one-third of the factors that determine height, and environmental conditions account for two-thirds. If this type of disease is not treated early, the child’s final height as an adult may only be about 1.30 meters, i.e., dwarfism. The next diseases are precocious puberty, hypothyroidism, abnormal adrenocortical function, idiopathic dwarfism, as well as younger than fetal age and abnormal bone development, all of which can cause dwarfism. With the current medical technology, it can be treated if interventions are taken before the bone age is healed.
For children with dwarfism, doctors will take targeted treatment according to different causes, for example, for thyroxine deficiency, only oral thyroxine tablets are needed; if it is growth hormone deficiency, then growth hormone injection can also achieve the effect; for precocious puberty, the application of gonadotropin-releasing hormone drugs is safe and effective, which can inhibit sexual maturation and also effectively improve height. Therefore, as long as parents can detect early and carry out regular treatment, most children can reach their genetic height.