One year treatment with clonidine in children with constitutional growth delay

Abstract

The therapeutic potential of clonidine was evaluated in 112 prepubertal children with short stature, delayed bone age and a growth velocity of 4.1 +/- 0.4 cm/yr in boys and 4.2 +/- 0.5 cm/yr in girls. The alpha 2 agonist was orally administered at 0.075 mg/m2 to 51 boys and 39 girls over a period of at least one year, and the effect compared to a vitamin treatment given to 10 age matched boys and 12 age matched females showing similar growth velocities. After one year of treatment growth velocity was increased to 6.6 +/- 1.2 cm/yr in boys and 6.50 +/- 1.0 cm/yr in girls treated with the drug, whereas in those given vitamins only 4.9 +/- 0.7 cm/yr in boys and 5 +/- 0.6 cm/yr in girls was recorded. Bone age remained 1.5 +/- 0.3 yr behind chronological age in both vitamin and clonidine treated groups. If only the 65% of patients that show a growth velocity increment of more than 2 cm/yr are considered the growth velocity reaches 7.20 +/- 0.82 cm/yr in boys and 6.68 +/- 0.75 cm/yr in girls, indicating that clonidine may be a useful pharmacological agent in the treatment of some patients with constitutional growth delay. The remaining 35% patients do not show any significant increase in growth velocity.

Oral clonidine premedication reduces vomiting in children after strabismus surgery

“…m -2 for one year has been reported in 90 children with constitutional growth delay. 21 These investigations appear to indicate the safety of clonidine for children at the dose used in the present study. Furthermore, an anecdotal report has revealed that there were no deaths in 11 toddlers ingesting clonidine accidentally in doses Of I0-150 I~g" kg-l. 22 This episode also relieves us of our anxiety that clonidine 4 ~g.…”

The Effect of Clonidine Therapy on Height and Growth Velocity in Constitutional Growth and Puberty Delay

“…Similarly in a prospective study by DorantesAlvarez et al clonidine administration in children with familial or constitutional growth short stature, increased height velocity in both groups [23]. Moreno Esteban et al and Calzolari et al [24,25] also claimed that clonidine was helpful in increasing growth velocity of patients with constitutional growth delay. Above disagreement and discrepancies of studies results, may be due to differences in baseline characteristic in studies populations, causes of short stature, different clonidine prescription and additional treatment with vitamins or calcium replacement in some studies.…”