Insulin-like growth factor I correlations to changes of the hormonal status in puberty and age.

IGF-I is considered to be one of the most important growth factors during puberty. Information concerning its correlation to thyroid hormones (T3, T4), adrenal and sex steroids is limited to puberty and the elderly. The presented study included 455 subjects (among them 259 children) ranging in age from newborn to 100 years.

[Retrospective studies of the long-term course of various forms of hyperthyroidism with special reference to prognostic aspects].

In 153 patients, who from 1978 to 1982 were under treatment for clinically and radiochemically proven hyperthyroidism, thyroid function was re-examined at an observation interval of 5-10 years. Overall, the remission rate after initial treatment was 75%; after 5-10 years, 123 patients (80%) showed an euthyroid metabolic condition. Following conservative therapy alone, euthyroidism was seen unexpectedly often in patients with supposed autonomy.

[Thyroid diseases in advanced age].

Nearly all diseases of the thyroid, such as nodular goitre, thyroid carcinoma, non-immunogenic hyperthyroidism and idiopathic hypothyroidism, exhibit an increase in frequency with age. Their recognition is rendered more difficult by the often oligosymptomatic, ambiguous clinical picture, but it is the timely treatment that is of particular prognostic importance to an organism weakened due to polymorbidity. In all hard nodular alterations, a malignoma must be ruled out by sonography, scintigraphy and cytopuncture.

[Treatment of constitutionally tall girls with physiological estrogen doses in the prepuberty period. An alternative to high-dose estrogen therapy].

The international literature shows that the constitutional tall stature of girls has so far been treated with high estrogen doses after the onset of puberty. But nowadays it is felt however, that the potential risks of high-dose estrogen therapy are considerable. While the hazards of persisting gonadotropine suppression were found to be less important, thrombo-embolic complications or severe changes in the liver cannot be excluded in young people.

[Recent aspects of therapy with androgenic and anabolic steroids].

From the pharmacology of the therapeutically available androgen preparations and the clinical experience results that a highly dosed androgen long-term therapy is effectively possible only by testosterone esters which are to be injected intramuscularly (e.g. testosterone oenanthate).

[Psychosocial aspects of extremely tall girls with a treatment-induced precocious puberty (author's transl)].

Is psychosocial development influenced by tall stature and/or induced precocious puberty? This question was examined in 20 girls at 9,5 to 15,8 years of age who were admitted to estrogen treatment because of excessive constitutional tallness. Additionally, reference was made to the results of psychologically directed interviews with 86 girls who had undergone such treatment when 9 to 13 years old, and who belonged to a total collective of 387 tall girls cared for in the years 1966 to 1980. About half of the girls let discern symptoms pointing to neurosis, culminating in late puberty (age of dancing-lesion).

[Changes in the serum triglyceride levels following treatment with ovulation inhibitors in tall girls].

The chronological course of serum triglycerides was determined in 12 girls aged 9--10 years, who have been cyclically treated with mestranol (80 microgram/d) and chlormadinonacetate during 3 1/2 years on average, because of constitutional tall stature. A significant increase of the triglycerides level from 80 to 130 mg/100 ml (0.91 to 1.

[Retardation of puberty and growth].

The disturbed puberty is most frequently manifested by a retardation of sexual maturation and growth. For a correct classification of a developmental disturbance the knowledge of the endocrine processes, of the stages of puberty, tables of height and methods of the assessment of the skeletal maturity is necessary, the use of which for the population of the GDR is discussed. The large differential diagnosis of the delayed puberty and of the short stature must be above all concentrated to the causal-therapeutically influencible endocrinopathies, even though the proportion of the constitutional delayed puberty as an extreme variant of the norm with a good spontaneous prognosis prevails.

Psychic and intellectual development in girls with precocious puberty.

Examinations of psychic and intellectual development were made in 9 girls with idiopathic precocious puberty. The question was, whether precocious somatic maturation corresponds with an accelerated development of intellectual efficiency and psycho-social behaviour. Whereas psychodiagnostic investigations and questionnaires to parents and teachers suggested age-related, normal results, there was found a remarkable tendency to elevated IQ values, averaging 123.

[The pararheumatic syndrome in thyroid diseases].

25 patients with hypothyroidism and 100 patients with hyperthyroidism were anamnestically, clinically, serologically and radiologically examined for the presence of a para- or pseudorheumatic symptomatology. The evaluation was carried out in comparison to the control groups of the same sex and age distribution. In nearly half the cases in hypothyroidism a symptomatology with polyarthralgias, myalgias, weakness of the muscles, acroparaesthesias, rigidity, swelling of the fingers and thickenings of the synovial membrane which are to be classified as "myxoedematous pseudorheumatism" stood in the foreground, which for the largest part were concomitant with a polyarthrosis.

[Current aspects in the diagnosis and therapy of hypothyroidism].

Also at present hypothyroidism is frequently not recognised, especially its discrete forms of the course should be more included in differential-diagnostic considerations. Decisive is the clinical anamnestic suspicion which, after exhaustion of the laboratory-diagnostic possibilities, will justify the application of probatory therapy, even on a relatively large scale. This disease deserves secial regard, taking into consideration its beneficial and well practicable therapeutic influencibility and, on the other hand, its sever prognostic consequences to the subject in case of therapeutic neglect.