Maternal serum insulin-like growth factor-I.

The recent report on maternal insulin-like growth factor-I is very interesting. Yang et al. concluded that “maternal serum IGF-I is significantly related to GA, maternal BW, and BMI during pregnancy.” In fact, there are some previous reports on this issue. Pathmaperuma et al. made a completely different observation. In their report, it was reported that serum IGF-I “did not correlate with newborn or maternal anthropometric indices”. There are many facts to be considered. First, the level of serum IGF-I is sometimes mentioned to vary between difference races, and this might be the possible explanation for different observations in different settings. Second, the present report used only patient history to conclude that the patient was in fact “healthy”. There are many possible abnormalities that are occult, and are only biochemical abnormalities in the mothers. Third, the techniques for determination of IGF-I level should be discussed. It would appear that the diagnostic properties seem to be variable from test kit to test kit.