A Comparison of the Effects of Insulin Hypoglycæmia and Arginine Infusion on Release of Human Growth Hormone

Cut-off limits of the peak GH response to stimulation tests for the diagnosis of GH deficiency in children and adolescents: study in patients with organic GHD

“…A large number of stimulation tests for GH secretion have been proposed in the last 50 years (4). The cut-off level was initially set at 5-7 μg/L, and subsequently was arbitrarily increased to 10 μg/L (5,6,7,8,9,10). The choice of this single fixed cut-off level consider neither the type of stimulus nor the variation in response due to gender, age, puberty, BMI and other factors.…”

The arginine and GHRP-2 tests as alternatives to the insulin tolerance test for the diagnosis of adult GH deficiency in Japanese patients: A comparison

“…The classical stimulation test of GH secretion, the ARG test, has been widely used in clinical practice [13,18]. However, the ARG test has been recognized as an unreliable test for the diagnosis of AGHD because of insufficient stimulation of GH secretion [3][4][5].…”

“…The GHRP-2 test has been reported as a useful and safe stimulation test for the diagnosis of AGHD [11], glycemia (blood glucose nadir ≤ 50 mg/dL or ≤ half of the pre-test blood glucose levels) [13] in the ITT were excluded. The remaining 71 patients (52 females, 19 males; median age, 38.0 years; age range, 18-65 years) were included.…”

Re-evaluation of exercise as a screening test for ruling out human growth hormone deficiency.

“…Raiti et al, 1967;Maclaren et al, 1974 (Frantz et al, 1965) and age (Sukker et al, 1968) and often shows false negative results (Keenan et al, 1972;Lacey et al, 1973;Buckler 1973;Hansen 1973;Lin et al, 1974;Okada et al, 1972), but it has been used as a screening test to assure normal HGH secretion (Buckler 1972;Keenan et al, 1972;Lacey et al, 1973;Hansen 1973;Lin et al, 1974 patient developed in height by more than 15 cm 3 years, it was decided that HGH deficiency could be ruled out. HGH level during the exercise test increased to more than 5ng/ml in 20 of the 27 children, but not in the remaining 7.…”