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GH therapy improved height, weight in young children born small
Very young children who are born small for gestational age and have poor growth during their first years of life could benefit from growth hormone treatment, according to research published in The Journal of Endocrinology & Metabolism.
In a study of patients from the Pfizer International Growth Database, treatment with GH resulted in significant improvement in height and weight during a 3-year period, and the small for gestational age (SGA) model could help estimate the responses.
“With a careful monitoring of postnatal growth, especially during the first months of life, we believe that it is possible to identify the subgroup of SGA children who will not catch-up spontaneously and start GH treatment as early as 2 years of age,” the researchers wrote.
Margaret CS Boguszewski, MD, PhD, of the department of pediatrics, Federal University of Paraná in Curitiba, Brazil, and colleagues evaluated growth in 620 children with length and/or width below –2 SD scores (SDS) at birth; 156 were aged 2 to 4 years (100 boys; median age, 3.3 years), and 464 were aged 4 to 6 years (284 boys; median age, 4.9 years).
As part of the large Pfizer pharmacoepidemiologic survey, all children had been treated with somatropin recombinant (Genotropin, Pfizer), a human GH. Both groups demonstrated significant increase in height velocity during GH treatment; the researchers compiled results as median values and percentiles.
Median height SDS increased from –3.9 (–5.4 to –2.9) at the beginning of the study to –2.2 (–3.8 to –1) at 3 years in the younger group (P<.01); the median increase was –3.4 (–4.5 to –2.6) to –2 (–3.3 to –0.9) in the older group (P<.01).
In the same time period, median weight SDS increased from –3.8 (–5.9 to –2.4) to –2.1 (–4.1 to –0.5) in the younger group (P<.01); the median increase was –3.1 (–4.8 to –1.8) to –1.6 (–3.1 to –0.1) in the older group (P<.01).
Growth responses during the first and second years could be estimated by the SGA model. “The GH dose was one of the most important predictors of growth response,” the researchers wrote.
Disclosure: One researcher is a committee member at Pfizer. Two researchers are employees at Pfizer Endocrine Care.