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Growth Hormone Secretion in Acromegaly

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Acromegaly

Abstract

Although striking clinical features of acromegaly had been noticed for a long time, their association with hypersecretion of growth hormone (GH) was first suggested by Cushing. Since then, many attempts have been made to demonstrate an increase of GH in plasma from acromegalic patients. Early studies using the tibia epiphyseal bioassay method revealed the presence of growth-promoting factors in lyophilized plasma from acro-megalic patients (1). It was difficult, however, to quantify plasma GH levels using this bioassay method. The hemoagglutination inhibition assay offered greater sensitivity but this procedure was still not satisfactory for measuring the small amounts of GH present in plasma (2). More recently the sensitive and reliable measurement of plasma GH was made possible by the introduction of a radioimmunoassay (RIA) for GH (3,4). Since then, RIAs for GH have been extensively used for studying GH secretion in patients with acromegaly. In this article, we discuss GH secretion in acromegalic patients based on results obtained from studies conducted in our laboratory as well as findings reported in the literature.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan

    Hiroo Imura, Yuzuru Kato & Eiji Ishikawa

  2. Department of Biochemistry, Miyazaki Medical College, Miyazaki, Japan

    Hiroo Imura, Yuzuru Kato & Eiji Ishikawa

Authors
  1. Hiroo Imura
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  2. Yuzuru Kato
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  3. Eiji Ishikawa
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Richard J. Robbins M.D. (Co-Chairman) (Co-Chairman)

  2. Cedars Sinai Medical Center, UCLA School of Medical Science, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Shlomo Melmed M.D. (Co-Chairman) (Co-Chairman)

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© 1987 Plenum Press, New York

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Imura, H., Kato, Y., Ishikawa, E. (1987). Growth Hormone Secretion in Acromegaly. In: Robbins, R.J., Melmed, S. (eds) Acromegaly. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1913-9_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1913-9_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9064-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-1913-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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