Psychosocial short stature (PSS) is a disorder of short stature or growth failure and/or delayed puberty of infancy, childhood, and adolescence that is observed in association with emotional deprivation, a pathologic psychosocial environment, or both.

What is psychosocial short stature?

Psychosocial short stature (PSS) is a disorder of short stature or growth failure and/or delayed puberty of infancy, childhood, and adolescence that is observed in association with emotional deprivation, a pathologic psychosocial environment, or both.

What do you mean by psychosocial dwarfism?

Abstract. Psychosocial dwarfism is a syndrome caused by emotional deprivation (maternal deprivation), characterized by symptoms of delayed motor and intellectual development, abnormal eating and drinking habits, enuresis and encopresis, aggressiveness and a pathological family structure.

What is short stature disorder?

Short stature is a general term used to describe a condition in which a child or a teen’s height is well below the average height of his or her peers. Short stature typically means that a person’s height is below that of the shortest 3 percent to 5 percent of children of the same age and sex.

What is the most common cause of short stature?

The most common cause of short stature is having parents whose height is below average, but around 5 percent of children with short stature have a medical condition. Conditions that can underlie short stature include: undernutrition, due to a disease or lack of nutrients.

What is Laron dwarfism?

Laron syndrome is a rare form of short stature that results from the body’s inability to use growth hormone , a substance produced by the brain’s pituitary gland that helps promote growth.

What causes a child to stop growing?

Slow growth occurs when a child is not growing at the average rate for their age. The delay may be due to an underlying health condition, such as growth hormone deficiency. Some growth problems are genetic. Others are caused by a hormonal disorder or the inadequate absorption of food.

Is psychogenic dwarfism reversible?

While the cure for PSS is questionable, some studies show that placing the child affected with the disease in a foster or group home increases growth rate and socialization skills.

What area of the brain seems to be affected in psychosocial dwarfism?

At this time, no one clearly understands the cause psychosocial dwarfism. Most experts feel it involves a deficiency in growth hormones, the result of emotional stress affecting the pituitary gland, the master regulator within the brain responsible for orchestrating the body’s normal hormone secretions.

What is global short stature?

Compared with a well-nourished, genetically relevant population, short stature is defined as a standing height more than 2 standard deviations (SDs) below the mean (or below the 2.5 percentile) for sex.

Is short stature dominant or recessive?

All types of primordial dwarfism are caused by changes in genes. Different gene mutations cause the different conditions that make up primordial dwarfism. In many cases, but not all, individuals with primordial dwarfism inherit a mutant gene from each parent. This is called an autosomal recessive condition.

What hormone causes abnormally small stature?

Growth hormone deficiency (GHD), also known as dwarfism or pituitary dwarfism, is a condition caused by insufficient amounts of growth hormone in the body. Children with GHD have abnormally short stature with normal body proportions.