Growth Hormone in Dehradun

What is a Growth Hormone?

Growth hormone is released by the pituitary gland, and it drives skeletal growth in children and regulates muscle, fat and bone metabolism throughout life. The essential thing to understand about measuring it is that a single random level is close to meaningless. The pituitary releases it in short pulses, mostly during deep sleep and after exercise, so between pulses the level is naturally very low, and a low reading in a healthy person is entirely expected rather than evidence of deficiency. Equally, a raised reading may simply catch a normal pulse. For this reason growth hormone is rarely diagnosed on a resting sample. Instead, doctors use dynamic tests, deliberately provoking or suppressing the pituitary and watching how it responds: a stimulation test where a failure to rise suggests deficiency, or a suppression test using a glucose load where a failure to fall suggests excess. IGF-1, a hormone made by the liver in response to growth hormone, is often more useful for screening because it is stable through the day and reflects average exposure rather than a moment.

Why take this test?

Growth hormone testing is advised for a child growing significantly more slowly than expected, falling across growth chart centiles, or markedly short for the family, and for a child growing unusually fast, which raises the question of excess. In adults it is used where growth hormone deficiency is suspected after pituitary surgery, radiotherapy or head injury, and where excess is suspected, which in adults produces acromegaly: gradual enlargement of the hands, feet and jaw, rings and shoes becoming tight, coarsening facial features, headaches, excessive sweating, joint pain and sometimes new diabetes or high blood pressure. Because acromegaly develops so slowly, it is frequently missed for years. This is a specialist-directed test, usually arranged by an endocrinologist as part of a dynamic protocol, and it should not be ordered as an isolated random sample in a routine health check, where the result cannot be interpreted.

• A child growing slowly or falling across growth centiles
• A child growing unusually fast
• Suspected pituitary deficiency after surgery, radiotherapy or head injury
• Suspected acromegaly: enlarging hands, feet or jaw, coarsening features
• Rings or shoes becoming tight, with headaches and excessive sweating
• As part of a specialist-directed stimulation or suppression protocol

FAQs: Growth Hormone in Dehradun