Researchers from Chungnam National University in South Korea have developed a mathematical model that predicts a child's individual response to growth hormone therapy. The results of the team led by Professor Che Hyun and researcher Cho Hyun were published in the journal Value in Health, according to infohub.kz.
Idiopathic short stature is diagnosed in children whose height is significantly below the norm for their age and sex in the absence of pronounced pathologies. The study involved 91 prepubertal children. The specialists applied a nonlinear Gompertz mixed-effects model, correlating the cumulative hormone dose with the dynamics of the participants' height percentiles over a median follow-up period of 619 days. During treatment, the children's average height percentile increased from 1.26 to 9.16.
The analysis showed that the most pronounced response to therapy was observed in children with a higher body mass index, lower levels of insulin-like growth factor-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3), and shorter fathers. Notably, it was body mass index that demonstrated the strongest association with treatment outcomes.
The model was integrated into a web tool that helps doctors simulate growth trajectories and select personalized hormone dosages.