1Growth Hormone (GH) provocation tests and the response to GH treatment in GH deficiency

Key words: short stature; growth response; growth hormone; provocation test Conflicts of interest: all three authors have from time to time received support from Pfizer for contributing to conferences on child growth. 2Abstract Objective: to identify factors, particularly the growth hormone (GH) provocation test result, affecting growth response to GH treatment in children with GH deficiency (GHD). Subjects: 337 prepubertal GHD patients < 10 years from the UK Pharmacia KIGS database (GH response to provocation test < 20mU/l). Outcome measure: annual change in height SDS (revised UK reference) in the first and second years of treatment. Results: height increased by 0.74 SDS units (SD 0.39) in the first year of treatment and 0.37 units (SD 0.27) in the second. Adjusting for age, height, weight, midparent height and injection frequency, the strongest predictor of first year growth response was the GH provocation test result – halving the result predicted an extra heigh