Quality of life after growth hormone therapy and induced puberty in women with Turner syndrome

Objective: To evaluate health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in young women with Turner syndrome (TS) after long-term growth hormone (GH) therapy and induced puberty and to analyze whether HRQoL was influenced by auxologic parameters, pubertal development, or subjective parameters. Study design: The study group comprised 49 women with TS, mean (standard deviation) age 19.6 (±3.0) years, all former participants of 2 GH studies, ≥6 months after GH discontinuation. Puberty was induced by estrogen treatment, at mean age 12.9 (±1.1) years. HRQoL was measured by self-reports of the 2 generic questionnaires, SF36 and TAAQOL. As an additional source of information on HRQoL, we applied parental proxy reports. Results: HRQoL of the women with TS was normal. Remarkably, the women with TS had higher HRQoL scores on some of the scales, including "social functioning" and "role-emotional. " Satisfaction with height and breast development had a positive influence on several HRQoL scales. Conclusions: The young women with TS who reached normal height and had age-appropriate pubertal development reported normal HRQoL. The relatively high scores on some of the HRQoL scales can be explained by an estrogen effect or by a possible response shift, indicating a different internal reference in women with TS. We hypothesize that GH and estrogen treatment positively influenced HRQoL in young women with TS. Copyright

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