A database study of the safety and effectiveness of daily growth hormone in treating more than 80,000 children with growth disorders worldwide: a plain language summary of publication

Abstract

Summary

Researchers looked at data from the largest and longest-running database of children with growth disorders who were treated with daily injections of a brand of growth hormone called Genotropin. The researchers used these data to better understand the safety and effectiveness of daily growth hormone treatment.

Researchers showed that daily growth hormone treatment:

○ Increased the children’s heights, measured after 1 year of treatment. This was seen for all of the growth disorders studied.

○ Increased growth in children of different ages, with higher growth seen in children who had begun treatment before they started puberty.

○ Allowed short children to reach an adult height within the normal range. This was true even for children who did not begin treatment until early adolescence.

○ Was safe. Only a very small percentage (3%) of children had any side effects related to growth hormone treatment, the most common of which was headaches.

When children reach the end of puberty, their growth plates close and they are unable to grow any taller. Once this happens, growth hormone treatment cannot increase their growth further and treatment should be stopped.

The purpose of this plain language summary is to help you to understand the findings from recent research.

Somatropin is used to treat the conditions under study that are discussed in this summary. Approval varies by country; please check with your local healthcare provider for more details.

The results of this study may differ from those of other studies. Health professionals should make treatment decisions based on all available evidence and not on the results of a single study.

Keywords

effectiveness growth hormone growth hormone deficiency growth disorders international pediatric puberty registry safety somatropin

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Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Professor Kerstin Albertsson-Wikland, who was one of the authors of the original publication and contributed to the development of this plain language summary. Had Professor Kerstin Albertsson-Wikland been alive at the time of submission, she would have met the remaining requirements of authorship and would have been included in the author byline for this summary. Writing support for this summary was provided by Chu Kong Liew, PhD, CMPP, at Envision Pharma Group, and was funded by Pfizer. All authors of the original publication (except for Professor Kerstin Albertsson-Wikland) were involved in preparing this summary and approved the content in the final version. Pfizer would like to thank all of the people who took part in this study.