Incidence of neurosecretory dysfunction among children aged 6-14 years in Rehovot, Israel.

Screening of 7500 children aged between 5.8 and 14.4 years, out of a total population of 39,690 in this age group in the Rehovot region, revealed 111 children with heights 2.5 SD below the mean for their age, according to the Tanner-Whitehouse standards. Included among these short children were eight with hypochondroplastic skeletal disease, two with Down's syndrome, four with thalassaemia, four with Turner's syndrome, three with coeliac disease, four with classical growth hormone (GH) deficiency, four with intrauterine growth retardation, four with systemic disease and 78 without obvious underlying causes. In 35 of the 78 children in the last group, the 24-hour integrated concentration of GH was in the hypopituitary range (less than 3.2 ng/ml), and GH neurosecretory dysfunction (NSD) was accordingly diagnosed. This represents an incidence of GH neurosecretory dysfunction of 45% among abnormally short children without underlying pathology, and is consistent with the authors' previous findings. The overall frequency of GH neurosecretory dysfunction in the screened population was 4/1000.