Abstract
The history of growth hormone therapy in children began 50 years ago. The first product was extracted from pituitary animals, but were soon clinically treated to show that only growth hormone derived from the primate pituitary gland is effective in humans.
The first purified extract of growth hormone from human pituitary gland was made in 1956. The biological activity of this little-purified preparation was 1 IU / 1 mg.
In 1957, Beck and his colleagues first treated a child with growth hormone deficiency for a short time (when he raised "pituitary dwarfism"), and a year later Raben published a report on the increase in growth rate in boys with insufficient growth hormone during 10 months of treatment. Similar observations in larger groups of patients have been published repeatedly in the following years.