Side effects of growth hormone injections in children

I believe that most of the reasons why people know about growth hormone now are for the healthy growth of their children. Growth hormone is a hormone secreted by the human pituitary gland that promotes human growth. However, some children do not secrete enough growth hormone for various reasons, which directly leads to their height being particularly short among their peers. Injecting growth hormone is a fast and effective treatment method, but does it have side effects? Let's talk about the side effects of growth hormone injections in children.

1. Mild and transient water and sodium retention, slight changes in blood pressure usually disappear after 7 days of treatment.

2. Benign intracranial hypertension, manifested by headache, vomiting, vision loss, and papilledema. These symptoms appear in the first few months of growth hormone treatment, or as late as 3 years, with an incidence of 1/1000-6/1000. After stopping growth hormone treatment, the symptoms of intracranial hypertension disappear quickly, and children can tolerate the resumption of low-dose growth hormone treatment after a period of time.

3. Growth hormone promotes bone growth and proportionally improves height and sitting height. Growth hormone treatment will not increase the risk of scoliosis, but will accelerate the progression of scoliosis. Therefore, before patients receive growth hormone treatment, they should be excluded from living with scoliosis or kyphosis.

4. The incidence of femoral head slippage treated with growth hormone is 4/100,000-150/100,000.

5. Thyroid metabolism. In most children treated with growth hormone, there is no significant change in thyroid function. Among children with idiopathic growth hormone deficiency, 30% of the children have thyroid secretion lower than normal. Therefore, during growth hormone treatment, thyroid function should be tested every 3 months. Once a decrease is found, thyroid preparations should be supplemented in time.

6. Immune function. There are growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor receptors on B lymphocytes and macrophages in the blood. Growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor can stimulate cell proliferation, stimulate B lymphocytes to produce immunoglobulins, enhance NK cell activity, induce phagocytosis and promote the killing of intracellular progenitors. Although children with growth hormone deficiency have mild immune dysfunction, they generally have no obvious clinical symptoms.

7. Lipid metabolism: growth hormone has the function of breaking down fat.

8. Glucose metabolism. Growth hormone treatment of children and adolescents increases fasting and postprandial insulin levels, but fasting blood glucose and blood glucose homeostasis are normal. After stopping treatment, they return to normal.

9. Growth hormone therapy and tumors. Growth hormone will not cause tumors, but if a tumor already exists, growth hormone therapy will promote the growth of the tumor. This is also an important reason why children need to undergo a full set of examinations before injecting growth hormone to rule out certain metabolic diseases, tumors, etc. Because growth hormone promotes growth, if the child has these problems (hidden and unknown), the child's own secretion level may not induce or aggravate them. After exogenous use, the condition will be aggravated. In layman's terms, cancer cells will also accelerate division. This is the biggest side effect!