Growth hormone was discovered in the 1920s, and obtained in a crystalline form from the pituitary gland of animals in 1944 by scientists Lyem and Evans.
In 1956, human growth hormone was isolated, and in 1958, human growth hormone was isolated.
Maurice Raben, an endocrinologist at New England Medical Center in Boston, first introduced it to a child who did not grow up due to the fact that his body did not produce this hormone at all. The treatment helped, and the child began to grow.
Other doctors soon followed suit. Treating adolescents with growth hormone deficiency has become a reality. It seemed that it was a wonderful way out for children who Anabolika Deutschland. At that time, the only source of growth hormone was the human brain – the brain of corpses. It took the brains of thousands of dead people to get just a few drops of the hormone that could be injected into a sick child.without this hormone, were doomed to become people below normal height or even dwarfs. However, catastrophe soon broke out.
Most of the cadaveric material came from Africa. The hormone was extracted from the pituitary gland, and because it breaks down when heated, pharmaceutical factories pasteurize it rather than sterilize it. In the 1980s. three children receiving growth hormone at once developed a rare viral disease – Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (BCD). It is characterized by progressive dementia and loss of
muscle control. Within about 5 years, the sick person dies.
After the discovery of the disease in children receiving growth hormone, the distribution of the drug was stopped. In 1991, BCD developed in seven children in the United States, and there were 50 cases of the disease worldwide associated with injections of growth hormone. And the number of patients may continue to grow, since the disease is caused by an infectious agent, which, before symptoms appear, may not be felt for a long time (up to 15 years).
Since the brain of corpses had to be abandoned as a source of the hormone, a very difficult problem arose – obtaining a synthetic hormone. Growth hormone is the largest protein produced by the pituitary gland and consists of 191 amino acids.