Short children born prematurely: data from KIGS

Abstract

Background: Advances in neonatal care have enabled the survival of extremely preterm infants. Some of them have growth failure and remain short at later ages. As a consequence, children born prematurely may be candidates for growth hormone (GH) treatment.

Aims: The goal of this study was to obtain information about children on GH therapy enrolled in the Pfizer International Growth Database (KIGS) who were born prematurely.

Patients: The KIGS database was queried for data on prepubertal short children (height <-2 standard deviation score; SDS) born with gestational age below 37 weeks. Birth weight had to be available.

Results: In total, 3,215 patients were selected and classified according to gestational age and birth weight as preterm (<37 weeks' gestation), very preterm (VP; <33 weeks' gestation), appropriate for gestational age (AGA; birth weight between -2 and +2 SDS) or small for gestational age (SGA; birth weight <-2 SDS). Of these, 1,928 children were preterm AGA, 629 very preterm AGA, 519 preterm SGA, and 139 very preterm SGA.

Conclusions: KIGS is a cumulative database and provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the growth response to GH therapy of premature children born with differences in gestational ages, size at birth, rate of postnatal growth, and GH secretion status.