Adult height in precocious puberty after long-term treatment with deslorelin

Precocious puberty often leads to short adult height. Since the introduction of luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) agonist treatment for LHRH-dependent precocious puberty in 1979, several reports have shown increased predicted height among LHRH agonist-treated children. To determine whether the LHRH agonist deslorelin can normalize the adult height of children with precocious puberty, we are conducting a long-term pilot study involving 161 children. This report describes the first 44 children to have attained final or proximate adult height. These children were 7.1 ± 1.2 (mean ± SD) yr old (bone age 11.8 ± 1.5 yr) and had been in puberty for 3.1 ± 0.3 yr at the start of treatment. They were treated with deslorelin (4 μg/kg/day sc) for 4.1 ± 1.3 yr and had been withdrawn from treatment for an average of 2.4 yr at the time of this study (age 13.6 ± 0.9 yr). Fourteen of the 44 children, who had grown less than 0.5 cm during the previous year, were considered to have attained adult height. The other...