Improve Height with Growth Hormone

The height of a person is determined by genetics and the growth hormones that are secreted by the pituitary gland.

There are some children with growth related conditions, for example: growth hormone deficiency, small for gestational age, Turner’s syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome and the controversial idiopathic short stature, for which treatment with growth hormone is usually prescribed.

Idiopathic short stature refers to an unexplained extreme short stature in children that lead to adult height below the 3rd percentile.  When treated with growth hormone, such children were  found to have increased height from 4 to 7 cms. This, however, led to a controversy on whether these children were truly of short stature or not. It also led to an increase in the number of parents seeking treatment to make otherwise normal children a little taller.

Does this synthetic growth hormone help in increasing the height of short kids, who are otherwise healthy? Many parents seem to think so.

Many endocrinologists keep getting requests from ambitious parents to give growth hormone shots for their kids who are short but otherwise healthy. Therefore, they burn their pockets to manipulate their child’s growth for the so called designer kids effect, who appear to be normal but are really unwell.

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2003 has approved the use of rHGH(recombinant human growth hormone) for children with idiopathic, unexplained or short stature, without a diagnosed metabolic hormone deficiency.

Many studies have predicted that on an average, growth hormone will deliver an extra 1 to 3 inches to an adult while considering all other factors.  As far as safety is concerned, the hormones have an excellent track record while a person is using it, but the risks later on in life cannot be predicted, in the absence of long term studies.

The estimated cost of the treatment is  around $4000 a month for 2 years or more. This treatment needs to be given before puberty till the bone plates fuse.

These factors, plus the substantial cost of treatment, make it unclear whether the small expected gain in height justifies such treatment in children, who are otherwise not ill.