In July last year, Gao Miaomiao's son was injected with the first shot of growth hormone.
After 20 days, her son has not grown taller at all, but she is alert that his nose seems to be bigger than before, and his lips are also thickening.
"Is it a side effect or my delusion?" Gao Miaomiao asked for help online.
Under the post, more than one person has made similar discoveries. Parents with similar experiences commented, "(After the child was injected with growth hormone), he had a big nose and thick lips, and he completely changed as a person, and he felt like a handsome guy turned into an ugly uncle from a young age. But looking back, if you don't grow 170, what's the use of being handsome?"
This coincides with Gao Miaomiao's thoughts. "I feel that our family has become uglier and uglier since the injection, and I am worried, but when I think about it, I can still have plastic surgery when I am ugly as an adult, and there is no way to do it if I don't grow tall. ”
Injections will make you ugly, but Gao Miaomiao feels that she can still be saved by plastic surgery when she becomes an adult/Stills from "Becoming a Mother".
Gao Miaomiao and his wife are both 160 cm tall. During a bone examination, the doctor estimated that the son's height would not exceed 168 cm in the best state in the future.
"The height of a boy is very important, not to mention that he grows to 180, no matter how he grows to 170. This data disappointed her. Despite the opposition of her husband and elders, she resolutely decided to inject her child with growth hormone.
In a biological sense, growth hormone is a peptide hormone secreted by the anterior pituitary gland that plays a key role in the growth and development of the human body. In 1985, genetically recombinant growth hormone was introduced, which brought hope for the treatment of children with short stature. The "growth hormone" used in clinical practice is mainly produced by genetic recombination technology, which is consistent with human pituitary growth hormone in amino acid content, sequence and protein structure, and its therapeutic effect has been widely verified.
Nowadays, in addition to prescription drugs for treating conditions, growth hormone has become a panacea in the eyes of more and more parents.
Last straw
"The secretion of growth hormone is insufficient, and I think it is like a lack of vitamins, so I supplemented it, and I didn't say that I wanted to pull out the seedlings to help it grow. At the beginning of 2020, after being detected with a lack of growth hormone, Xia Liu decided to inject her daughter with growth hormone.
Xia Liu has been paying attention to her daughter's height. From birth, the daughter is a "little example". Compared to his peers, he is short and has a small appetite, and "the growth curve has always been running low".
At first, she thought that the child belonged to the category of "late growth" and did not intervene too much. Until the daughter was 11 and a half years old, she was still less than 138 centimeters tall, "very obviously a head shorter than others".
After her daughter was diagnosed with a lack of growth hormone, Xia Liu decided to inject her with growth hormone / stills from "Hummingbird".
She took her daughter to a tertiary hospital in Shanghai for examination. Growth hormone provocation test, pituitary gland MRI, CT, bone age detection...... After a whole set of processes, it was concluded that the child's height was at the critical value of 3% of the height curve of children of the same age, his weight was less than 3%, his bone age was backward, and he was deficient in growth hormone, and he was diagnosed with short stature. The doctor directly gave a recommendation for growth hormone injections.
Xia Liu is 156 cm, her husband is 178 cm, and her daughter's genetic height will be 160 cm. But according to the previous growth trend, doctors predict that her daughter will be about 150 centimeters tall in the future.
Whatever the body lacks, it is as reasonable as taking medicine when you are sick. In her opinion, this decision is different from that of some parents who simply want to "pull up".
In the endocrinology or growth and development department of the hospital, it is crowded with parents who want to give their children injections.
Gao Miao Miao is registered a week in advance. In July last year, she took her child to a tertiary hospital in Yichang, Hubei Province for a bone examination. Outpatient No. 1 is hard to find, she said, and basically she has to register a few days in advance.
At the scene, parents gathered at the door of the clinic. Among the young faces, some children "stand out from the crowd", but parents are still eager to get a shot.
Gao Miao Miao is not satisfied with the child's height. After the son reached the age of 12, his body suddenly rose taller, and he grew 11 centimeters taller in a year, but the joy did not last long. It's like being cut off halfway, and after a year, the rally suddenly falls, sometimes for months without the slightest change. After waiting like this for a year, my son only grew 2 centimeters taller.
There was no movement in height, and Gao Miaomiao panicked. The results of the interview confirmed her suspicions. The doctor told her that her son's bone age was normal, but the distal end of his thumb had begun to close and there was not much room for growth, so he told her to leave.
Gao Miaomiao was unwilling and continued to ask about the way to grow taller. I was told that if I wanted to grow taller, I could only inject growth hormone.
Popular science manuals in the hospital / Source: Courtesy of the interviewee
She had heard about this "height booster" from a colleague early on. The daughter of a colleague who was diagnosed with short stature has been injected with growth hormone for three consecutive years, and it can be seen that she has grown a lot taller with the naked eye. Now, this is the child's last hope to grow taller.
But the doctor advised her to go back and think about it again, saying that even if she injected growth hormone, the effect was not ideal. According to the bone age of the son, if you want to inject growth hormone, you have to take anastrozole tablets orally at the same time to delay the bone age process.
I heard that I could grow taller, and my son was willing to get an injection. But the husband and elders "don't trust foreign chemical synthetic things" and want the children to grow naturally.
Despite the opposition, she decided to seize on this glimmer of hope.
A little higher
There is a group lying in Gao Miaomiao's mobile phone list, and the group name is "Step by Step". There are 470 people in the group, and most of them are anxious about their children's height. They expect their children to grow a little higher like bamboo.
Zhang Hanyu understands this anxiety. Since the birth of her son, a curve has formed the focus of her life. During each physical examination, she records the child's height and weight. At first, everything remained within the standard range. After the age of three, the growth rate slows down. The son is growing up day by day, and the gap is getting bigger and bigger.
Later, the son became the shortest in the class. Every time she gets out of school, she doesn't feel good when she sees her son at the front of the line. Even when the children appear in groups, she can always catch the obvious "depression" at a glance.
Seeing his son at the front of the line, Zhang Hanyu didn't feel good / Source: Visual China
And the child also has a vague awareness of "short". Once, her son asked her, "Why are people taller than me?" and he realized that he couldn't outrun anyone else. Another time, my son was full of frustration and said that he was not selected as the lead singer of the show. Because the school performance required several students to lead the singer to be of uniform height, the short son was not selected.
Last year, my son was 7 years old, 114.5 cm tall, and his bone age was on the small side. According to the "Standard Deviation Unit Value Table of Height and Weight of Children and Adolescents Aged 0-18" produced by the Growth and Development Research Office of the Capital Institute of Pediatrics, the son's height is below the median line. Although the growth hormone challenge test showed that the child did not have a deficiency of growth hormone, the child had low growth factors and was diagnosed with idiopathic short stature.
Popular science brochures in the hospital / Source: Photo provided by the interviewee
Zhang Hanyu is 155 centimeters and her husband is 158 centimeters. She said that it is precisely because the couple is not tall that they should intervene in the child's height as soon as possible, "I am afraid that there will be no chance in the future."
Zhang Hanyu was once troubled by his height. She vividly remembers that at the stage of adolescence, when her height was already fixed, she was so eager to grow another 3 centimeters. But no matter how hard she tried, her height stagnated, and "I was impressed by that feeling of powerlessness."
She was a lecturer. Every time I stand on the podium, I always feel that my aura is weakened because of my short stature. She is afraid that this "inferior" sentiment will recur in her son.
"If you are too short, you may grow up to have low self-esteem. Li Zhe said that "short" faces many risks, such as being nicknamed and bullying children who "specialize in bullying short and fat". On the contrary, tall people can add a few points to employment and love.
Li Zhe is 170 cm tall and his wife is 158 cm. According to the genetic height calculation formula on the Internet, he calculated that his son's genetic height is about 168 centimeters, and maybe even 170 centimeters. However, he hopes that his son will be taller, "I am a little taller than my parents, and I hope that every generation will have this growth".
Height is like a spring, Li Zhe believes that as long as you work hard enough the day after tomorrow, there is no big problem with bounces above 175 cm. And a little taller than the standard height can meet the expectations of the couple. He set 180 centimeters as the ideal height for his son.
Achieving the perfect height requires a lot of hard work. A long time ago, Li Zhe consciously instilled the importance of height in his son, and would change his tricks to mobilize his children's enthusiasm for sports. Taking basketball as an example, he will play basketball videos and buy interesting books, such as slam dunk comic books. Through words and deeds, his son has formed an internal drive and is very active in sports.
A long time ago, Li Zhe consciously mobilized the enthusiasm of children's sports / Source: Visual China
After entering the middle class of kindergarten, skipping rope has become a must-do exercise for my son every night. By the end of the first grade, my son was already a rope skipping expert, and he could jump 167 times a minute, third in the school. After their son entered primary school, they developed a more detailed plan to "chase high", focusing on both exercise and diet, such as basketball, skipping rope, swimming, milk, calcium tablets, and cheese.
But the test report is not satisfactory. The son, who had just turned 11 years old, was 146 centimeters tall and had a bone age of nearly 13 years old, and was diagnosed with "precocious puberty".
He consulted an online doctor, and the other party replied that his son could only grow to 160 meters, and there was no other way. The couple did not give up and consulted a pediatric director. The other party said that it is possible to reach 1.7 meters by doubles inhibitors and growth hormone.
The next day, they went to the local tertiary hospital for consultation, and the doctor also gave a "doubles" recommendation. "I'm not very satisfied with 1.7 (m), but at least it's normal, and I can't accept 1.6 (m). In this way, in November last year, my son was injected with the first injection of suppressant drugs in the hospital.
"Problems that can be solved with money"
Inject "short powder", starting with the medicine.
Li Zhe picked up an alcohol swab and wiped the mouth of the medicine bottle for disinfection. Then, pick up the syringe, suck two tubes of air, and inject it into the bottle. Then take a syringe to draw an appropriate amount of sterile water and inject it into the above medicine bottle. Finally, place the pill bottle down on the table and gently roll it, mix the potion and you're done.
After that, the thick needle will land on my 11-year-old son's thigh, abdomen or upper arm. Since November last year, one shot a day, thunder can't move.
The "short powder" used by Li Zhe, that is, the short-acting powder, is a type of growth hormone preparation. At present, there are three main types of growth hormone injections on the market: long-acting water, short-acting water and short-acting powder.
Growth hormone preparations need to be stored at 2~8 °C in the dark, and when taking the medicine, parents will bring this thermal insulation bag / Source: Photo provided by the interviewee
In terms of injection frequency, powder and short-acting water require 1 time/day, while long-acting water requires 1 time/week. Compared with water, powder is more complicated to use, you need to prepare your own medicine, and use a disposable needle to inject, the needle is thicker, and the pain is more obvious when injecting, but it is cheaper.
The dose of growth hormone is positively correlated with body weight. According to his son's weight, Li Zhe spends no more than 2,000 yuan per month on powder. The inhibitor is injected once a month, also more than 1,000 yuan.
Zhang Hanyu looked at the injection device of the powder, "my hands trembled." She couldn't bear to stick the needle into the child's skin, so she chose a short-acting water agent at the middle price, which cost about 3,700 yuan per month.
After deciding to inject growth hormone, the hospital prescribed her a pill and left the contact information of the pharmaceutical company on the pill box. She needs to contact the manufacturer by herself, and choose the nearest place to pick up the medicine with the prescription through the pick-up point provided by the manufacturer. At the point of pick-up, a one-time dose of up to three months can be taken. She never doubted the qualifications of the medicine pick-up point.
Growth hormone injection used by Zhang Hanyu's son / Source: Photo provided by the interviewee
The short-acting water solution is also a daily injection, but it uses a crypto-needle electronic pen. The concealed needle design and the short needle opening make the process of self-injection more comfortable. Later, her son was able to inject himself without her needing to get started.
10 months later, Zhang Hanyu was pleasantly surprised to find that his son had grown about 10 centimeters taller. Her hanging heart also settled.
In the "chasing high" circle, some people will bring out the famous Argentine star - Messi to prove the effect of growth hormone. In this story, Messi was diagnosed with short stature caused by a lack of growth hormone, and after being treated with growth hormone injections, he was able to get rid of his short stature and embark on the road to becoming the king of the ball.
Wu Xueyan, chief physician of the Department of Secretology and head of the pituitary-gonadal group of the Department of Secretology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, said that growth hormone deficiency is the best indication for the use of growth hormone, which is as natural as drinking water when thirsty and eating when hungry. However, if there is no deficiency of growth hormone, increasing the dose of growth hormone on the basis of complying with the medication can also have the effect of promoting growth. For example, patients with Turner syndrome can also have some effect on growing taller after taking growth hormone therapy.
In 2013, the Endocrinology, Genetics and Metabolism Group of the Pediatric Branch of the Chinese Medical Association formulated the "Recommendations on the Clinical Application of Genetically Recombinant Human Growth Hormone in Pediatrics", pointing out that the range of diseases that can be used for the treatment of growth hormone in China includes growth hormone deficiency, idiopathic short stature, small-for-gestational-age infants, Noonan syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome and Noonan syndrome, etc.
In Zhang Hanyu's view, his son was born in a lucky era. Because height has become "a problem that can be solved with money".
She counted on piling up a height of 170 centimeters with money. At that point, she stopped interfering with the child's height. "With the secret recipe of growth hormone, I think it will definitely grow, but I may need to spend more money to make him grow to 170. ”
Only occasionally, she would have a hint of concern. Coupled with the follow-up fee, more than 40,000 yuan has been spent in the past 10 months. As your child gains weight, so will the dose, and the future cost is unknown.
price
Many parents have tasted the sweetness of growth hormone therapy.
Two years after the growth hormone injection, Xia Liu's daughter grew from 138 cm to 160 cm. However, she learned that growth hormone therapy may cause adverse effects, such as benign intracranial hypertension, hypothyroidism, and abnormal glucose metabolism. Therefore, during the treatment period, she will be followed up on time every three months.
After more than two years of growth hormone injection, Xia Liu's daughter's height and weight have changed / Source: Photo provided by the interviewee
In 2022, my daughter detected several indicator data anomalies. On the advice of her doctor, she stopped hormone therapy. As the doctor said, after stopping the drug, the indicators returned to normal.
Sometimes, parents want to gamble on unknown, uncertain adverse reactions.
Li Zhe had heard that there were birth risks associated with growth hormone injections in boys. He didn't know if it was true or not, but he still decided to give his son medicine, "that is, to evaluate it regularly, and there is no other way to do it."
It is a medicine that is three parts poisonous. Like all parents, Gao Miaomiao also has concerns. She remembers that doctors had said that taking anastrozole tablets could cause symptoms such as acne and body hair growth. These "costs" are acceptable to her.
But in her opinion, the cost of "chasing high" is much more than that.
Five months after the growth hormone injection, Gao Miaomiao's son also grew about 5.5 centimeters. That's more than double the growth over the past entire year. But the quarrels in the family "never broke."
The child's monthly powder cost is nearly 5,000 yuan. It's one thing to burn money, and if it works, it's worth the money. What made her concerned was that there were more adverse reactions in her son.
Appearance is the first to change. One morning, half a month after taking the drug, she noticed that the child's lips had thickened a lot, "like swollen". Not only did I start to get acne, my facial bones became rough, my cheekbones became prominent, my hands became bigger, and my feet became longer. "Relatives who hadn't seen each other in months were stunned and thought we were fooling. ”
At the same time, the child "becomes ugly and black", and at the same time, his mood swings are huge, and he becomes "irritable, irritable, anxious, insomnia, headaches, and misanthropic of the world, and hates all things and people". The negative effects even radiate. After half a year of medication, the child's academic performance declined, from the top 16 in the original grade to the 40th in the grade. "I'm very impulsive with my parents at home, and I can't get into studying every day, so I'm in a daze, and I have a little intention of self-harm. ”
Gao Miaomiao's son had huge mood swings after taking the drug / Source: Visual China
Such a change has made the complaints between family members more intense, "As long as the child is a little uncomfortable, everyone thinks that it is a growth hormone shot." Later, my son became irritable after consciously taking the drug, and he was no longer willing to take injections.
She had approached the doctor and the pharmacologist about the child's temper, "The pharmacologist said that anastrozole would cause mood changes, but the doctor denied it. In the "Step by Step Promotion" group, many parents have the same confusion as Gao Miaomiao.
"We put the accelerator on the accelerator to run faster, but there is a wall in front of us and we press the accelerator desperately, and the car will be ruined. Wu Xueyan said that although genetically recombinant growth hormone has brought good news, it is not applicable to everyone, such as contraindicated in patients with active malignant tumors, complete epiphyseal closure, and so on.
The epiphysis closes and growth is terminated. People who are not at the ideal height, but no longer have the potential to grow, continue to use growth hormone, which may cause acromegaly, which can lead to "bigger hands and feet, and ugly face". The bones are deformed, not lengthened.
Growth hormone is not something that can be fought if you want to. In order to start growth hormone therapy, you need to have various physical examinations in advance. However, Wu cautioned that the growth hormone provocation test is not the decisive criterion for judging whether to use growth hormone. Even if the final test result shows growth hormone deficiency, it should be judged by a professional doctor based on individual differences and a combination of factors.
Now, there are 15 days' worth of medicine left in the refrigerator, but Gao Miaomiao does not dare to let the child take the medicine again. After stopping the medication, she felt that the child "recovered a little in all aspects, and the emotional change was the greatest." ”