Near normalization of adolescent height with growth hormone therapy in very short children without growth hormone deficiency

Ten prepubertal children with stature at or below the 1st percentile for height and without growth hormone deficiency received 0.3 U recombinant growth hormone per kilogram daily for 2 years before puberty. Their growth velocity increased from 4 +/- 0.3 cm/yr before treatment to 10.7 +/- 0.6 and 8.8 +/- 0.6 cm, respectively, during the first and second years of treatment, and then remained at 5.7 +/- 0.7 cm the year after the end of growth hormone administration. This resulted in a near normalization of adolescent height. Bone maturation paralleled chronologic age, and therefore the expected final height of the children increased by approximately 10 cm. Administration of growth hormone induced a reversible hyperinsulinemia, with moderate and transient changes in glucose metabolism. A prospective, randomized study, including an untreated cohort, will be needed to confirm the effects on final height and to determine the magnitude of the response in familial short stature.

[Result of 3 years of screening for preclinical phase of juvenile insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus]

We screened 1,000 individuals for pre-type I diabetes mellitus: 927 were first degree relatives of patients treated at our institution, 31 other had related autoimmune diseases, 42 had fortuitously discovered slight hyperglycemia. Islet cell antibodies were present in 31 subjects, 13 adults and 18 children. Among these 18 children, 7 also had complement-fixing islet cell antibodies, and 5 anti-insulin antibodies. All but one initially had a normal insulin response to intravenous glucose. The child with the abolished response, as well as another whose insulin secretion fell down during the study period, became diabetic. Based on these preliminary data, we are developing large scale family screening of pre-type I diabetes.

An improved FORTRAN 77 recombinant DNA database management system with graphic extensions in GKS

We have improved an existing clone database management system written in FORTRAN 77 and adapted it to our software environment. Improvements are that the database can be interrogated for any type of information, not just keywords. Also, recombinant DNA constructions can be represented in a simplified 'shorthand', whereafter a program assembles the full nucleotide sequence from the contributing fragments, which may be obtained from nucleotide sequence databases. Another improvement is the replacement of the database manager by programs, running in batch to maintain the databank and verify its consistency automatically. Finally, graphic extensions are written in Graphical Kernel System, to draw linear and circular restriction maps of recombinants. Besides restriction sites, recombinant features can be presented from the feature lines of recombinant database entries, or from the feature tables of nucleotide databases. The clone database management system is fully integrated into the sequence analysis software package from the Pasteur Institute, Paris, and is made accessible through the same menu. As a result, recombinant DNA sequences can directly be analysed by the sequence analysis programs.