To the Editor.—The report of Jackson et al in the October issue of the Journal suggests that, in children with delayed maturation, oxandrolone promotes linear growth only at the expense of undue acceleration of osseous maturation. This is in contrast to our findings with this agent in girls with Turner syndrome.2 At first glance, this difference might be attributed to the fact that girls with Turner syndrome have normal osseous maturation for chronological age until the time of adolescence. Thus, they are absolutely short, whereas the youngsters treated by Jackson et al had the common syndrome of delayed maturation.
This report led me to review our data on the nine girls originally described who now have been treated for periods of 13 to 49 months, as well as two additional girls with Turner syndrome treated 12 and 16 months, respectively, and 11 other children with growth problems (ten