Assessment of Physical Growth in Children with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH)

Abstract

The study is an attempt to assess the degree and direction of deviations in two physical development traits: body weight and height in children with congential adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), as compared to the norm. The pattern of growth of the studied traits in children with CAH is significantly different than an average pattern for normal children. A new research approach used to investigate the problem of developmental disorders in children with CAH revealed that both body height and weight - regardless of the sex - in successive stages (prepubertal, pubertal and postpubertal) of ontogenetic development tend to have progressively lower mean values as compared to the norm, and that differences between these values in the analyzed stages are statistically significant (p<0.01).