The effect of long-term corticosterild treatment on height velocity in childhood

ABSTRACT

The auther analysed 29 patients who were treated with prednisolone, including nephrotic syndrome (13 cases), acute leukemia(10 cases), bronchial asthma (2 cases), juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (2 cases) and ulcerative colitis (1 cases) patients in childhood, after remission induction, pro9longed alternate or interrupted treatment was used. The auther observed patterns of height velocity of these patients from 1.6 to 10.3 years. The results were as follow 1) Of the total 29 patients who were treated with prednisolone, most of them showed normal height velocity within the percentile channels, but 4 cases (13.8%) of them showed delay in height velocity. 2) The 4 cases who delayed in height velocity, including 2 cases of bronchial asthma and 2 cases of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis patients, received prednisolone daily about 0.4~1.5mg/kg from 3 to 6 years alternatively or interruptedly. Height velocity was decreased from bet ween 3 and 25 percentile channel at first to below 3 percentile channel at last contiously. 3) In these 4 cases, height velocity was inversely proportion to dosage of prednisolone.