With the progress of social productivity and the improvement of living standard, human height is also increasing, and the ideal height has become a weight that cannot be underestimated in some fields. However, many parents wait for their children to develop before they realize that their children are too short and think of going to the doctor, but it is often too late. Parents should pay enough attention to the child’s height and weight as a mirror of the child’s health, and not be delayed by the old idea that some children are ‘late bloomers’. How should short stature be treated? What is the case of using growth hormone treatment? The following is a detailed answer.
★What is short stature?
According to the guidelines for the treatment of short stature, it refers to individuals of the same race, sex and age whose height is lower than the average height of the normal population by 2 standard deviations (-2 SD) or lower than the 3rd percentile (-1.88 SD) in a similar living environment. Some short stature is a normal physiological variant. For proper diagnosis, appropriate clinical observations and laboratory tests must be performed in children with growth retardation.
★How is short stature treated?
Finding the cause of your child’s short stature is a prerequisite for treatment. Generally, the cause can be found through blood tests, skeletal x-rays, pituitary MRI and other examinations. Some parents ask if growth hormone can make their children grow taller. In fact, there are strict indications for growth hormone therapy, and it is not suitable for all children with short stature. If hypothyroidism is the cause of short stature, some children can grow significantly taller without the need for growth hormone as long as the cause is treated. If growth hormone is used alone without treating the cause, the treatment effect is not ideal.
For children with hypopituitarism and growth hormone deficiency, growth hormone injections are currently the ideal treatment method. If the treatment is appropriate, the child can grow more than 10 cm in height within a year. Of course, the timing of treatment is also important. Children whose epiphyses are close to closing are less effective in using growth hormone than children who are younger in bone age.
So what is growth hormone?
What people usually call “hormones” generally refers to glucocorticoids and sex hormones, and parents are concerned about using these hormones for their children, although they are also called “hormones”, growth hormone is not one of them.
Growth hormone is a protein hormone secreted by the anterior pituitary gland and consists of 191 amino acids. It is essential for the regulation of normal growth from birth to adulthood, and is the only hormone that causes linear bone growth. Growth hormone used as a drug is synthesized using recombinant genetic techniques and has the exact same chemical structure as the growth hormone produced by the human pituitary gland. Glucocorticoid is a steroid hormone secreted by the adrenal cortex. Sex hormones are several steroid hormones secreted by the gonads and adrenal cortex. Whether in terms of source, chemical structure, or physiological and pharmacological effects, growth hormones are completely different from glucocorticoids and sex hormones. Proper injection of growth hormone and timely review and follow-up will not produce glucocorticoid or sex hormone-like effects and side effects.
Growth hormone indications approved by FDA since 1985 1985 Childhood Growth Hormone Deficiency (GHD) 1996 Turner’s short stature 2000 Prader-willi syndrome 2001 Smaller than Gestational Age (SGA) 2002 Idiopathic Short Stature (ISS) Currently, growth hormone is the only internationally recognized drug for the treatment of short stature! growth hormone is the only internationally recognized drug for short stature!
The final height of human body is inseparable from genetic, environmental, nutritional, exercise, sleep and psychosocial factors. However, if your child is still sitting in the first three rows of the class after one semester because of short stature, and the growth rate is less than 4 cm per year, and the gap with children of the same age is gradually widening, you should pay more attention to it and take your child to pediatric and endocrine specialists for consultation and examination as early as possible The following are some examples of the types of tests that can be done. The Anyang Women’s and Children’s Health Hospital Dwarf Clinic will do the height prediction for you for free, so you can pay attention to your child’s height and future!