Growth Hormone Helps Hearts of Childhood Cancer Patients

Roman Bystrianyk · medicine forum Guru Joined: 02 May 2005 Posts: 454

Amanda Gardner, "Growth Hormone Helps Hearts of Childhood Cancer
Patients", Forbes, July 3, 2005,
Link:
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2005/07/03/hscout526628.html

Many survivors of childhood cancer end up with hearts that are too
small for their bodies. As adults, this can translate into heart
failure, transplant waiting lists, and even death.

A new study of these survivors has found, almost by accident, that
growth hormone therapy resulted in larger hearts that were more in line
with their body size.

"This was a safe therapy, and it brought them closer to normal," said
Dr. Steven Lipshultz, lead author of the study, which appears in the
June issue of Pediatrics.

"It's a very important tool," added Dr. Revathy Sundaram, a pediatric
oncologist at Long Island College Hospital in New York City. "All of us
should start looking into using this or at least discuss it."

The findings have implications not only for childhood cancer survivors,
but also for other children with hearts that are too small.

"The No. 1 problem that causes children around the world to need a
heart transplant is cardiomyopathy or unhealthy heart muscle,"
explained Lipshultz, a professor and chairman of pediatrics at the
University of Miami School of Medicine. "One of the main causes of
cardiomyopathy is the inability of the heart muscle to keep up with the
size of the body. They are basically outgrowing their heart."

And one reason for the inability of the heart muscle to keep up with
the body's growth is when anthracycline chemotherapy drugs are
administered to children with leukemia.

"The chemotherapy they received kept them alive, but it wasn't specific
for cancer cells. A number of heart muscles were killed as well,"
Lipshultz said. "These long-term survivors have an eightfold higher
risk of dying of cardiac death than if they had never been treated, and
it just keeps getting worse when they get older."

Chemotherapy and radiation can also damage regions of the brain that
make growth hormone, Lipshultz explained.

Perhaps 25 percent to 30 percent of children treated with these drugs
end up with small hearts, Sundaram said. "Then the blood vessels within
the heart are small so now you have an adult with a small heart and you
might get blocking of the blood vessels, so you're at risk for heart
problems," she said.

To date, the main "solution" has been to monitor these individuals
closely. There have been almost no randomized, controlled trials
because it's so difficult to get to the endpoints of whether the child
is going to live or not, Lipshultz explained.

The children in this study actually received growth hormone not because
of heart problems, but because they were shorter than other children
their age. When they reached an appropriate height, doctors stopped the
administration of growth hormone.

But there was an unanticipated and very welcome "side effect."

Thirty-four childhood cancer survivors treated with anthracyclines for
their cancer and later with growth hormone saw a normalization of the
wall thickness of the heart's left ventricle (the main pumping
chamber), as well as heart rate and blood pressure.

These measures returned to previous levels when the hormone therapy was
stopped -- which it was when children reached a more-or-less normal
height.

"For these children that don't have enough heart muscle for the size of
their body and wind up dying at much higher rates prematurely of heart
disease and have much higher rates of needing heart transplants, giving
injections of growth hormones resulted in making more muscle, as long
as you keep the growth hormone up," Lipshultz said.

Administration of growth hormone could be kept up indefinitely,
Lipshultz added.

Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at the Ochsner Clinic
Foundation in New Orleans, said, "This is a very good study. But this
is a highly selected group of children . . . I think now this will
probably become an important part of treatment in this group. This
should not mean that all kids should be getting growth hormone."

Milton Goldblatt · medicine forum beginner Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 1

does anyone know anything about a human growth horomone to provent
aging? I am a senior and thinking about thing such growth hormone
overseas. any recomdenations?

thank you in advance.

Shalom,

---Leland Milton Goldblatt, Ph.D. ®
Distinguished Professor
http://www.prof.faithweb.com

George Bush resisted an official inquiry into the worst national
disaster since Pearl Harbor for 18 months. Any reasonable person would
want to know what happened and they would want to make sure that there
were no traitors in our mists. It was reasonable to consider the
possibilities that the people who planned an attack like this had
inside help. A president would want this checked out. George W. Bush
wanted no investigation. He already had an official story and was
quickly passed on to the press.
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