Treatment of Short Stature in Children and Adolescents with Human Pituitary Growth Hormone (Raben)

THE availability of an active, growth-promoting hormone, extracted from human pituitary glands, has added a potent, useful and in fact unique substance to the physician's therapeutic armamentarium. Since the original preparation by Li and his coworkers1 and by Raben2 its growth-promoting effectiveness in hypopituitary dwarfs has been amply confirmed.3 4 5 6 7 As with all new agents it was hoped that human growth hormone (HGH, or somatotropin) would prove itself useful in a wide range of growth and metabolic disorders. Short stature is a common problem in pediatrics.8 It is a field in which many proposed therapies have proved to be valueless or . . .