In a consecutive group of 25 children with defective growth being evaluated for growth hormone deficiency, EEG-monitored slow-wave sleep provided discriminatory serum growth hormone responses equivalent to those obtained by arginine and insulin-hypoglycaemia provocation. Exercise was less effective but was able to provide a useful screening test. In 2 subjects with abnormal physiological but no...

The available evidence suggests that growth hormone and glucocorticoids are involved in the mobilization of lipid in animals deprived of food or insulin (l-7). In a study with adrenalectomized rats it was found that fatty acid release measured in vitro was much higher in tissues taken from rats treated with growth hormone and dexamethasonel (a potent synthetic glucocorticoid) than in tissue fro...

Oral glucose tolerance tests were carried out in 16 clinically normal subjects with pyridoxine deficiency (as adjusted by red cell transaminase activity and the 6h tryptophan load test), and in 16 nondeficient controls. The deficient subjects had fasting normoglycemia with hypoinsulinemia (p less than 0.01), and a normal postglucose increment in insulin, but peak blood glucose and incremental g...

SYNOPSIS. Insulin was discovered in 1922 as the causative factor for a human metabolic disorder (diabetes mellitus), but it was recognized early that the hormone had a broad phylogenetic distribution. By the mid 1970s, insulin had been isolated and sequenced from all classes of vertebrates, including Agnatha. Also it was discovered that the insulin gene family in vertebrates included two closel...

The growth hormone-insulin-like growth factor-1 axis plays a role in normal brain growth but little is known of the effect of growth hormone deficiency on brain structure. Children with isolated growth hormone deficiency (peak growth hormone <6.7 µg/l) and idiopathic short stature (peak growth hormone >10 µg/l) underwent cognitive assessment, diffusion tensor imaging and volumetric magnetic res...

The authors present numerous historical descriptions of persons who might suffered from gigantism or acromegaly. The oldest medical data of patients, initial attempts of causal neurosurgical treatment, history of growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor-1, growth hormone releasing hormone and somatostatin discovery is reported. The highest contemporary living persons are also listed.

Human pancreatic growth hormone releasing factor (GRF (1-44)) is the parent molecule of several peptides recently extracted from pancreatic tumours associated with acromegaly. A study was conducted to examine its effects on the release of growth hormone in normal volunteers and in patients with hypopituitarism and acromegaly. GRF (1-44) dose dependently stimulated the release of growth hormone ...