Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:90-92
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
Growth hormone-releasing factor stimulation test in depression
KR Krishnan, AN Manepalli, JC Ritchie, K Rayasam, ML Melville, G Daughtry, MO Thorner, JE Rivier, WW Vale and CB Nemeroff
Department of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710.
The authors administered the growth hormone-releasing factor (GRF)
stimulation test to 19 patients with major depression and 19 age- and
sex-matched control subjects to test the hypothesis that a blunted growth
hormone (GH) response to clonidine reflects a central alpha 2- adrenergic
receptor subsensitivity in depression. GH response to GRF was significantly
higher in patients with depression than in control subjects. This group
difference was mainly attributable to three of the 19 depressed patients
who exhibited markedly high GH responses to GRF. These results suggest that
the blunted GH response to clonidine seen in patients with depression is
not due to a pituitary defect in GH secretion.
