The Growth Hormone Profiles in Burn Patients

ABSTRACT

As the society is becoming more developed, the cause of burn is becoming more variable. However, current treatments of burn focus on the fluid therapy and wound care, human self-defenses by secreting various kinds of hormones to keep the homeostasis and overcome the stressful environment. Among these hormones, growth hormone is the most important one. Author tried to find a correlation between the burn and growth hormone by analyzing the change of growth hormone profile in burn patients. Ten burn patients were enrolled. Burn patients were performed insulin stimulation test to measure the growth hormone secretion. And serum level of insulin like growth factor-1(IGF-1), insulin like growth factor binding protein-3(IGFBP-3) were measured. Also nutritional parameters, such as pre- albumin, albumin, transferrin in serum were measured. The mean basal level of growth hormone was 1.73 +/- 2.18ng/ml in burn patients, 2.2+/-2.99ng/ml in control group(p>0.05). After insulin injection, the mean of peak growth hormone level was 3.58+/-2.58ng/ml in burn patients, 8.37+/-16.59ng/ml in control group(p0.05). In the correlation between burn extent and peak growth hormone level, growth hormone level tended to decrease as the burn extent grew wider (r=-.818, p<0.005). In this study, We could find that the growth hormone secretion was decreased in burn patient and the adequate replacement of growth hormone can be helpful in the treatment of burn.