Growth effect of GH therapy administered for a year to children with Terner’s syndrome. Analysis of international data base on growth monitoring of the Kabi Farmacia company

Abstract

To study the parameters that determine the effectiveness of treatment with growth hormone (GH) in Turner syndrome (TS), we examined the results of a survey of 175 children with this disease who were younger than 11 years old and were on therapy (GH) for the first year. Before the start of GH therapy, the median for age was 7.9 years, and the medians for SDS (standard deviation) growth, calculated relative to the norms for healthy children and patients with TS, were 2.5 and 0.3, respectively. The median for the dose of GH was 0.8 IU / kg per week, 86% of patients received the drug 6 or 7 times a week. Multiple regression analysis showed that growth rate was positively correlated with the dose of GH, the number of GH injections per week and the mass-growth index, but inversely correlated with age. These four most important indicators of prognosis determine the variability of the growth effect of therapy in 38% of cases. There are significant differences in this prediction model compared with idiopathic GH deficiency, in which the expected growth is the single most important predictive factor in the first year of SDS therapy. (The data obtained confirm the hypothesis that with TS there is no “growth jump"). The relative uncertainty of the prognosis indicates the need for a further search for indicators that determine the growth effect of therapy for TS.