Drug Found to Add Height for Short Children

Treating healthy short children with regular injections of a growth hormone can, in many cases, add inches to their final adult height, Stanford researchers reported Tuesday.

Experts said the new findings, presented at a meeting of the American Pediatric Society in San Diego, are sure to intensify the debate over the appropriateness of using the growth-enhancing drug to perform what some see as cosmetic medicine in short but otherwise normal children.

Genetically engineered human growth hormone has been approved for treatment of children who are short because of growth hormone deficiency. It must be injected three times a week throughout childhood until adolescence at a cost of about $20,000 a year. The drug typically adds five to eight inches for the shortest of the short.

In the latest study of 51 children--the biggest of its kind to report final results--Stanford’s Dr. Raymond Hintz and his colleagues gave human growth hormone to children who consistently passed the standard tests for normal growth hormone production but whose growth was lagging at least two years behind that of their peers. Their predicted adult height, based on X-ray studies of their bones, fell into the shortest 2% of the population.

Compared to their predicted heights at the beginning of the study--and compared to three different control groups of extremely short children who received no treatment--the treated children ended up with an average of two to three extra inches after three to seven years of growth hormone injections, Hintz said.

Researchers predicted that the findings would prompt many more parents to seek the treatment for short children. The market for the drug is $300 million per year, with an estimated 30,000 children receiving the injections because of hormone deficiency or other medical problems.