Quality of life in adolescents born small for gestational age: does growth hormone make a difference?

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over), published as a randomized controlled trial.

To evaluate quality of life (QoL) in adolescents born SGA without spontaneous catch-up growth, treated with and without long-term growth hormone (GH) therapy.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were teenagers.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and double-blind study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

As a double-blind Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

Two groups of adolescents born SGA without spontaneous catch-up growth participated in the QoL evaluation; a GH-treated group (n = 44, mean GH duration: 8.8 (1.7) years) and an untreated group (n = 28), both mean age 15.8 (2.1) years.

QoL was measured by self-reports of the TACQOL-S, a disorder-specific questionnaire, and the CHQ, a generic questionnaire.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Body Height, Body Image, Growth, Human Growth Hormone, Infant, Small for Gestational Age, Quality of Life and Surveys and Questionnaires.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over).

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2005 (Hormone research), a journal based in Switzerland.

More context: the Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) compound page, all human trials.