Acute metabolic response to human growth hormone in different types of dwarfism.

The effectiveness of human growth hormone (H.G.H.) in man is now well established from both the acute metabolic response (Beck et al., 1958 ; Ikkos et al., 1959 ; Medical Research Council, 1959) and the stimulation of growth after long-term therapy (Raben, 1962). In this paper we report the results of studies of the acute metabolic response to injected H.G.H. in different types of dwarfism and, in some of them, the relation between these responses and the levels of endogenous serum H.G.H. obtained during insulin-tolerance tests. A few of the dwarfed subjects have thereafter received long-term H.G.H. treatment in an attempt to promote growth, and the relation between this growth response and the results of the acute metabolic test has also been examined.