if tumours on the pituitary gland can make people grow taller, why can’t medical science just stimulate this gland on dwarves and those with stunted growth as a form of correctional medicine?
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They can do something similar it is called HGH or human growth hormone, but there can be issues using it especially if the person has already “missed” several years of growth.
You are correct that pituitary dysfunction can be a cause of dwarfism, but it is only one of more than a dozen causes. If a person with slow growth or delayed puberty is found to have pituitary dysfunction (typically growth hormone deficiency), then growth hormone is given by injection. I saw kids in my residency who were getting growth hormone injections. Typically, they are below normal on the growth charts, and if the diagnosis is delayed long enough, it is clear that they should have entered puberty but have not.
You don’t try to stimulate the pituitary gland. It makes like 8 different hormones. Would you all want them to get produced in larger quantities? Anyway, you can’t stimulate the pituitary from outside the nervous system. It gets stimulated anyway by the hypothalamus, which lies directly above it in the brain, and sometimes the problem lies with the hypothalamus (e.g., growth hormone releasing hormone [GHRH] deficiency). Pituitary control is a very delicate process. Other causes of dwarfism involve receptor abnormalities, cell signaling abnormalities, abnormalities in chromosome number (e.g., Turner syndrome, XO), abnormalities of the bone growth process, and the list goes on. Not fixable with supplementation of any substance.
Heads up, because language changes over time:
I’m not entirely sure, but I think the term that their community prefers these days is “little people”.
If anyone who’s more knowledgeable could chime in, please do. I’m open to corrections.
Bones have growth plates in them. After they become bony too, can’t add more bone length to the already existing bone.
Change are permanent after that. No bone growth
Pituitary dwarfism is a kind of dwarfism that can be treated with synthetic human growth hormone before a child’s growth plates have been fused. However, other forms of dwarfism are not caused by pituitary anomalies. Achondroplasia, for example, is a genetic condition where a protein functions abnormally, slowing the growth of bone in the cartilage of the growth plate. That makes the bones shorter and abnormally shaped.
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