Study of Luteinizing Hormone-Releasing Hormone Analog (LHRHa) in Pubertal Patients With Extreme Short Stature

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2001-10-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

Children with extreme short stature (height) and their families often experience significant psychological stress related to concerns about adult height. In addition, short stature often results in life-long emotional, social, and physical obstacles to the affected person.

Normal growth occurs in two phases. The first phase, known as childhood growth, occurs below the age of 10. The second phase of growth, teen-age or adolescent growth, begins between the ages of 10 and 15. In addition, puberty marks the time when the bone's growth plates (epiphysis) begin to close, initiating the completion of linear growth (height).

Some children suffer from a condition called precocious puberty, meaning that puberty begins at a younger age than normal. The development of medications known as synthetic LHRH analogs have provided a method to delay puberty and treat these patients.

LHRHa (deslorelin) is a hormone created to act like naturally occurring LHRH. It been used in patient's diagnosed with precocious (early onset) puberty. The drugs were able to regress patient's clinical signs of puberty, decrease the levels of adult sex hormones produced, and slow the rate of bone aging.

• Phase: Phase 2
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: No

Details

• Lead Sponsor: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
• Treatments: Deslorelin; Hormones; Prolactin Release-Inhibiting Factors

Criteria

Patients with extreme short stature will qualify for inclusion under this protocol if they meet the following criteria:

Age 9 through 15.99 years at the start of treatment.

Tanner II-V pubertal development.

Height at least 2.25 S.D. below the median for chronologic age at the time of pubertal onset, or a predicted adult height at least 2.25 S.D. below median adult height.

The height criterion must be met before study entry, but not necessarily on the actual date the patient starts to take the protocol injections because advancing puberty may cause an increase in height velocity that temporarily increases height standard deviation score.

Unfused carpal and phalangeal epiphyses by bone age x-ray.