Growth response on treatment is positively influenced by a young age at the start of treatment [ 1- 6] and, as height at onset of puberty highly influences final height [ 7], a model for prediction of not only annual but long-term prepubertal growth response on GH treatment would be a valuable contribution to the treatment decision-making process.
It would have been of interest to have more data on certain parameters such as parental height, age and height at the onset of puberty; duration of puberty; height gain during puberty; bone age; weight/BMI; mean exposure to study drug, and glucose parameters.
Moreover, because insufficient height at the onset of puberty leads to short final height, early diagnosis and treatment of GHD are necessary to allow catch-up growth to optimal height before puberty [11].
This is of great clinical significance as height at the onset of puberty has an important influence on adult height [ 7, 8, 15- 18].
Relatively high BMI in childhood, which in non-obese males is more closely tied to muscle mass than fat, was correlated with the earlier onset of puberty, height gain in childhood, and earlier reaching of peak height velocity in boys in a longitudinal Swedish-population study [ 31].
The mean effect on final height of oxandrolone, late induction of puberty, or both compared with placebo and early induction was +7.1 cm (that is, the mean final height in the combined oxandrolone/early, oxandrolone/late, and placebo/late groups compared with the placebo/early group), which is appreciably larger than the effects for either randomisation alone (table 3, combination).
Background: Limited evidence suggests that calcium intake before puberty influences adolescent height growth and the timing of puberty.
The height gain between the onset of puberty and the achievement of the AH (26.0 ± 4.7 cm) was greater than that reported by Tanner et al. [ 13] during normal puberty (25 cm).
Even though the pubertal spurt in height growth is a characteristic of puberty in both sexes, the current study is limited by the fact that the growth spurt measurement described in this article is not directly comparable between the sexes.
