Fibrosis Centers at Texas Children's Hospital/Baylor College of Med- icine in Houston ..... cancer (22), and with AIDS (52), have linked TNF- to protein wasting.
Growth Hormone Decreases Protein Catabolism in Children with Cystic Fibrosis DANA S. HARDIN, KENNETH J. ELLIS, MAYNARD DYSON, JULIE RICE, RUTH MCCONNELL, DAN K. SEILHEIMER
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University of Texas Southwestern Medical School (D.S.H., J.R.), Dallas, Texas 75390; Texas Children’s Hospital/Baylor College of Medicine (D.S.H., K.J.E., R.M., D.K.S.), Houston, Texas 77030; and Cook Children’s Hospital (M.D.), Fort Worth, Texas 76104 Despite aggressive nutritional therapy, low body weight and protein catabolism are common problems in children with cystic fibrosis. Previous studies by our group and others have demonstrated improvement in both height and weight in children with cystic fibrosis who were treated with human recombinant GH, and our group has recently documented improved clinical status and lean tissue mass as well. The purpose of this report is to summarize our findings of the effect of GH on whole body protein kinetics in cystic fibrosis and to relate these findings to changes in TNF-␣ levels. We conducted a 1-yr study of 19 prepubertal children with cystic fibrosis (age 7–12 yr, all
