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Inhibition by Prednisone of Growth Hormone (GH) Response to GH-Releasing Hormone in Normal Men

Department of Pediatrics, University of California (S.K., K.L.J.) La Jolla, California 92093
The Department of Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (W.B.W.) Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201
The Department of Pediatrics, Emory University (F.L.C.) Atlanta, Georgia 30322

Address requests for reprints to: Kenneth Lee Jones, M.D., Department of Pediatrics, M-009-C, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0609.

Glucocorticoids increase GHRH-stimulated GH secretion when added in vitro to cultured monkey, rat, and human pituitary cells and when injected in vivo into anesthetized rats. Yet, in man glucocorticoids inhibit linear growth and GH secretion. To clarify this apparent disparity and to determine if glucocorticoid stimulation can augment GH release in man after direct pituitary stimulation with GHRH, we administered 1 µg/kg GHRH dosage to seven normal men before and after a 4-day course of prednisone (20 mg, orally, three times daily). The second GHRH test was done 12 h after the last dose of prednisone was given.

Prednisone significantly inhibited the mean maximal increase in serum GH after GHRH treatment [20.7 ± 4.5 (±SE) vs. 2.4 µg/L; P < 0.01] as well as the GH value obtained by summing and averaging the individual means of the 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90 min serum GH concentrations (11.1 ± 1.2 vs. 4.3 ± 0.9 µg/L; P < 0.05). The mean serum insulin-like growth factor plasma glucose concentrations were not significantly altered prednisone administration. These results together with previous in vitro findings imply that glucocorticoid-induced inhibition GH secretion in man does not occur at the level of the pituitary gland, but, rather, at the hypothalamus or above.

Received November 5, 1987.

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