The effect of a dietary portfolio compared to a DASH-type diet on blood pressure.

Background And Aim: Compared to a DASH-type diet, an intensively applied dietary portfolio reduced diastolic blood pressure at 24 weeks as a secondary outcome in a previous study. Due to the importance of strategies to reduce blood pressure, we performed an exploratory analysis pooling data from intensively and routinely applied portfolio treatments from the same study to assess the effect over time on systolic, diastolic and mean arterial pressure (MAP), and the relation to sodium (Na(+)), potassium (K(+)), and portfolio components.

Methods And Results: 241 participants with hyperlipidemia, from four academic centers across Canada were randomized and completed either a DASH-type diet (control n = 82) or a dietary portfolio that included, soy protein, viscous fibers and nuts (n = 159) for 24 weeks.

Dexamethasone in the diagnostic work-up of growth hormone deficiency.

Objective: Acute administration of dexamethasone (dexa) has recently been shown to induce growth hormone (GH) release. To ascertain the efficacy of this stimulus in assessing GH secretory status in children, we tested it in a large group of patients with short stature.

Methods: We administered dexamethasone at the dose of 2 mg/m2 to 44 short normal children and 19 GH deficient (GHD) children, either orally or intravenously and compared the results of the dexa-test to the more classical clonidine test.

Evidence of a congenital midline brain anomaly in pituitary dwarfs: a magnetic resonance imaging study in 101 patients.

Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain in pituitary dwarfs has revealed a previously unknown entity: ectopia of the posterior pituitary (PPE), absence or hypoplasia of the pituitary stalk and hypoplasia of the anterior pituitary. The pathogenesis of these findings was explained originally by a traumatic transection of the pituitary stalk during delivery. A high incidence of breech delivery has been reported in these groups, but the traumatic hypothesis cannot explain the findings in the relatively high percentage of patients with normal delivery, nor account for a different feature also found in other pituitary dwarfs consisting of pituitary hypoplasia with normal posterior pituitary.

Persisting functional connection in growth-hormone-deficient patients with a transected stalk.

Prolactin response after domperidone (DOM) stimulus was used to investigate the functional status of the hypothalamo-hypophyseal axis in 57 congenital growth-hormone-deficient (GHD) children with and without magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) abnormalities. Response to DOM was significantly lower in the GHD children compared with controls, using maximum peak (p < 0.0001), increase (p < 0.