Word: dwarfism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...products in the next few years, including an agent that dissolves blood clots and could be useful in treating heart patients, and a human growth hormone that has successfully been tested for more than a year and could be available within twelve months to treat children afflicted with dwarfism...
...gradual growth that a child experiences between birth and maturity is regulated by a powerful hormone produced in the body's "master gland," or pituitary. If too much of the hormone is created, the child may become a giant; too little may cause a rare form of dwarfism. The production of the growth hormone is determined by another hormone, known as growth hormone-releasing factor (GRF). Scientists have known for decades that GRF is produced by the hypothalamus, located in the forebrain. But the problem of isolating GRF and then artificially reproducing it remained unsolved until the breakthrough, reported...
...Laureate Roger Guillemin, got its sample from a patient with a rare cancer that causes overproduction of GRF. Once isolated, the substance, which is structurally simple, was easily synthesized. Scientists now start the process of determining how to use GRF to solve certain growth problems in humans, like pituitary dwarfism. GRF may also be used to treat some kinds of diabetes and to speed the healing of wounds and burns...
Similar trials of recombinant DNA-produced human growth hormones received FDA approval and began in February at Stanford Medical School. This protein, with its potential for curing dwarfism and possibly fractured bones, will first be tested for safety in 20-day trials on adult volunteers and then in a one-year study of effectiveness that will follow...
Another scarce drug now bubbling out of Genentech's stainless-steel fermentation vat is human growth hormone, used to treat dwarfism. Only limited quantities have been available, most of it extracted from the pituitary glands of cadavers. In a test of the hormone, 20 youngsters are currently getting doses of bacterially produced HGH at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children...