title: Catch-up growth: new lessons for the clinician.
abstract: In 1963, Prader, Tanner, and von Harnack published a landmark article describing catch-up growth in children after illness or starvation. That same year, Tanner proposed a theory about catch-up growth based on a central regulatory principle that is 'informed' about an organism's height by means of a humoral factor. This led to the assumption that, when dissociation between a central age-appropriate set point for body size and actual body size occurs, an efferent signal is transmitted to growth tissue to stimulate growth that corresponds to age-appropriate body size. Catch-up growth has been observed in a wide range of endocrinological, nutritional, medical, and emotional disturbances, and the underlying causes are complex and not always well understood. Recently, catch-up growth in four situations has attracted the attention of endocrinologists, as these situations provide useful lessons for the clinician: hypothyroidism, growth hormone deficiency, intrauterine growth retardation, and adoption of children born in developing countries and raised in Western societies.
authors.affiliation: Paediatric Endocrinology Section, University Children 's Hospital, Tübingen, Germany. michael.ranke@med.uni-tuebingen.de
authors.forename: Michael B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Ranke
mesh_terms: D000300:Adoption; D001827:Body Height; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006128:Growth; D006130:Growth Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D019382:Human Growth Hormone / Q000172:deficiency; D006801:Humans; D007037:Hypothyroidism / Q000503:physiopathology; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007236:Infant, Small for Gestational Age
chemical_list: D019382:Human Growth Hormone