Catch-up growth: new lessons for the clinician

In 1963, Prader, Tanner, and von Harnack published a landmark article describing catch-up growth in children after illness or starvation. That same year, Tanner proposed a theory about catch-up growth based on a central regulatory principle that is 'informed' about an organism's height by means of a humoral factor. This led to the assumption that, when dissociation between a central age-appropriate set point for body size and actual body size occurs, an efferent signal is transmitted to growth tissue to stimulate growth that corresponds to age-appropriate body size. Catch-up growth has been observed in a wide range of endocrinological, nutritional, medical, and emotional disturbances, and the underlying causes are complex and not always well understood. Recently, catch-up growth in four situations has attracted the attention of endocrinologists, as these situations provide useful lessons for the clinician: hypothyroidism, growth hormone deficiency, intrauterine growth retardation, and adoption of children born in developing countries and raised in Western societies.