Abstract
Extract: Skeletal maturation has been examined in a group of diabetic children using their nondiabetic siblings as controls. Serial examinations were done over a five-year period.
The diabetic children have a significantly retarded bone age, whether assessed by examination of the hand or of the foot. However, their nondiabetic siblings had comparable retardation of skeletal maturation. Thus, in comparison with his normal sibling, the skeletal development of the diabetic child does not appear to have been affected by his disease process.
There is no significant difference between the development of the hand and the foot for either group of children. When the skeletal maturation of the hand and foot is compared for each child, the correlation is 0.998.
No significant trend can be demonstrated for the relation between skeletal development discrepancy and chronological age. The initial retardation of about six months at ten years of age and the progressive retardation of about one and a half months during the next three years of life are equivalent to a decrement of a half month in skeletal age for each year of chronological age since birth.
Speculation: The moderate, but significant, retardation of both groups of children when compared to the published standards requires explanation. These groups follow a pattern similar to that reported for the children in the longitudinal study of growth in Denver. The most likely factors producing these patterns are the result of sample or standard selection. The children used for the standards in the Atlases were predominantly from families whose socioeconomic level was definitely above average, whereas the diabetic population was more normally distributed in this context.
The high correlation between hand and foot in this series indicates the importance of using the detailed assessment technique described in the Atlas Standards and used for this study. Furthermore, the high degree of correlation found between the hand and the body as a whole by REYNOLDS and OSAKAWA [19] would suggest that the hand or the foot is equally representative of total body skeletal maturation.
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Weil, W. Skeletal Maturation in Juvenile Diabetes Mellitus. Pediatr Res 1, 470–478 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-196711000-00006
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-196711000-00006