"I let others speak about condoms:" Muslim religious leaders' selective engagement with an NGO-Led family planning project in rural Tanzania.

In the past two decades, religious leaders have garnered increased interest from health ministries and NGOs as promoters, educators, and implementers of sensitive health programs such as family planning in several African countries. While religious leaders' role as public health actors has been well-documented, there are few ethnographic accounts of how religious leaders engage with public health programs, especially family planning. Informed by twelve months of ethnographic study in three rural and peri-urban locations in Kilombero district in 2014-2016, this article examines how Muslim religious leaders experienced and negotiated their role as implementers of family planning services.

Are IGF-I and IGF-BP3 useful for diagnosing growth hormone deficiency in children of short stature?

Background: The diagnosis of growth hormone deficiency (GHD) is based on clinical and auxological characteristics combined with the results of growth hormone provocation tests.

Aim: To evaluate the utility of IGF-I and IGF-BP3 serum levels in the diagnosis of GHD among children of short stature.

Subjects/methods: We recruited 207 short pre-pubertal children and divided them into two groups.

Growth hormone neurosecretory dysfunction in a boy with hypohidrotic/anhidrotic ectodermal dysplasia: definition of short stature, molecular characterization and long-term hGH replacement treatment to final height.

Anhidrotic/hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia is a rare disorder, genetically heterogeneous, commonly X-linked recessive inherited, characterized by hypoplasia up to the absence of the eccrine glands with hypo-anhidrosis and secondary hyperpyrexia, hypodontia and some typical craniofacial features. Some papers have described how these patients may show poor growth, while other recent research shows normal growth. We report a boy with anhidrotic/hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia and growth hormone neurosecretory dysfunction, an association not previously reported, and we discuss the possible causes as well as the patient's response to growth hormone treatment until he reached final height.

Thyroid function and morphology in subjects with microdeletion of chromosome 22q11 (del(22)(q11)).

Introduction: Monoallelic microdeletion of chromosome 22q11 (22q11DS) is considered to be the commonest human microdeletion syndrome. Abnormalities of thyroid function are sporadically reported in this syndrome, but very few studies have specifically assessed this issue, and thyroid morphology has not been systematically studied.

Design: To evaluate the prevalence of abnormalities of thyroid function and morphology in a cohort of paediatric and adult patients with 22q11DS.

Diagnosis of growth hormone deficiency by using the arginine provocative test: is it possible to shorten testing time without altering validity?

Background: The arginine test is used for the diagnosis of growth hormone deficiency (GHD), but its duration is not uniform and varies from 180 to 90 min.

Subjects And Methods: To standardize this test, evaluating the possibility to shorten it to 90 min, we investigated the response of GH to the arginine test in 208 children evaluated for short stature (height less than -2 SD); 67 were diagnosed with idiopathic short stature (ISS) and 141 with GHD. We calculated the frequency distribution of the GH peaks to arginine in GHD and in ISS at various times and the percentage of GH peaks to arginine before and after 90 min in all and in ISS children.