Nearly 40 years after receiving a low dosage of Human Growth Hormone as a child, a 47-year-old Dutch man developed a fatal brain wasting disease.

            The man was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a rare brain-wasting disease that causes dementia and progressive loss of control over the body.  In the past, transplants or treatments with Human Growth Hormone extracted from cadaver-derived corneas or brain tissue have been linked to cases of CJD.

            According to Dr. Esther A. Croes of Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, “This case shows that the disease can develop decades after exposure to even a small dose of HGH.”

            He ws given a small amount of hGH at age nine during diagnostic tests to measure his growth.

            This case marks the longest incubation period for CJD, according to a report on the case.

            Human growth hormone was extracted from the pituitary glands of cadavers during the 1960’s, but is currently produced synthetically, according to a report in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

            According to Croes, most people who develop CJD after using hGH become ill within 10 years of using the hormone- in this case, it was 38 years later.

SOURCE: Reuters Health information, www.reuters health.com, May 23, 2002.