Growth Hormone Receptor Deficiency & Laron Syndrome

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not an endocrinologist, much less a growth hormone specialist.  However, the discussion of tesamorelin the last few days led me to a recent news article published last week in the Los Angeles Times about a small group of Ecuadoreans with Laron Syndrome (an autosomal recessive growth hormone receptor deficiency) followed by researchers whose findings were just published concluding that growth hormone receptor deficiency protected these people from cancers and diabetes compared to their normal relatives.  What's truly exciting is that the serum of these patients with Laron Syndrome protected DNA from breakage, which is one long-standing theory behind aging.  It also lead to increased programmed cell death or apoptosis (which is a good thing).

But what about ending up relatively short compared to your peers, say growing to a height of only 3-4' tall?  In this day and age, I'm not convinced that that's an acceptable side effect.  Most surveys & studies report that taller height (within reason) makes a difference in most things in life after all other factors are taken into account.  But what of the researchers and LA Times reporter's conclusion that lower growth hormone is better.

It turns out that long term 10 year studies demonstrate no increase in mortality in those patients with growth hormone deficiency who are given growth hormone.  Specialists in growth hormone were actually incensed enough to write a letter to the editor stating the same.  Likewise, a 20 year follow up study of survivors of childhood cancers who have since received growth hormone demonstrate favorable overall safety profile (although there is a subset that might be at higher risk of secondary neoplasm).

Moreover, growth hormone is released in response to strenuous exercise.  If growth hormone suppression were such a good thing, one might as well recommend limiting exercise and physical activity, when in fact all available data demonstrates lower mortality the more active one becomes over a lifetime.  Furthermore, we have data that growth hormone is important in bone mineral density, body composition, coronary disease, and most of all, quality of life.  Yes, future data may alter our current way of thinking but given what we have available to us now, I vote for (naturally) increasing growth hormone (within the normal reference range) as a means to live a high quality disease-free life for as long as possible, not necessarily to just live longer for duration's sake.