Clinical effects of growth hormone on bone: a review

Abstract

Growth hormone (GH) stimulates bone turnover. Deficiency of GH due to hypopituitarism is related to low bone mineral density and increased fracture risk. GH substitution increases and thus normalizes bone mineral density in these patients, which is one of a number of arguments for GH substitution in hypopituitarism. In contrast, a possible therapeutic use of GH in idiopathic osteoporosis and glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis is speculative and not established. Reduction of osteoporosis risk is an argument brought up for a use of GH in healthy elderly persons (anti-aging medicine). However, since only very limited data are available yet, this cannot be based on scientific evidence, and there are important concerns about the safety of use of GH in healthy elderly persons.

Design of the Growth hormone deficiency and Efficacy of Treatment (GET) score and non-interventional proof of concept study

“…The most pronounced effect of GH substitution on BMD is detectable at the lumbar spine [ 13 ], hence this was the measuring site for the GET score. Based on published data [ 14 ], DXA BMD lumbar spine z-score ≤ −2 was assigned a score of 0 points, and a z-score ≥ 0 was assigned a score of 20 points.…”

Preparative alkaline urea gradient PAGE: Application to purification of extraordinarily‐stable disulfide‐linked homodimer of human growth hormone

“…Human pituitary GHs are known to regulate growth, metabolism and development [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] and they constitute approximately 10% of the gland's dry weight [1,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. The predicted protein product of the normal hGH gene is a 22 kDa polypeptide chain of 191 amino acids possessing two intramolecular disulfide bridges [20][21][22].…”