PURPOSE: Nowadays pharmacologic provocation tests and physiologic tests are usually used to determine growth hormone(GH) deficiency in short stature. But this method has many problems. We know GH stimulates the release and synthesis of insulin-like growth factor-I(IGF-I) and measuring the level of IGF-I is relatively simple. So we measured plasma IGF-I to watch the correlation with the GH levels and to determine it may replace the complicated stimulation tests. METHODS: At the department of Pediatrics in Dong San Hospital from Dec. 1996 to Aug. 1998, childrens who visited for evaluation of short stature and measured GH and IGF-I simultaneously were reviewed. After clonidine and insulin administration, exercise and sleep, we measured their peak GH level and IGF-I level by the immunoradiometric assay(IRMA) kit. RESULTS: The ratio of boys and girls were 22 to 31 and the cases below 3 rd percentile were 26 which was the most. With phamacologic provocation test, there were 43 cases whose level of peak GH below 7 ng/mL(group I) but with combined phamacologic provocation and physiologic tests there were 27 cases of group I. The mean IGF-I level showed correlation with aging in both male and female(r=0.53, P<0.05). The relationship between peak GH and IGF-I level are found when we tested both phamacologic and physiologic combined tests. The mean IGF-I level did not correlate with height percentile. CONCLUSION: Measuring the IGF-I value was useful to detect GH deficient children but combined tests were more helpful.
Aging ; Child* ; Clonidine ; Female ; Growth Hormone ; Humans ; Insulin ; Insulin-Like Growth Factor I* ; Male ; Pediatrics ; Plasma