Acute renal hypertrophy in experimental diabetes: Lack of effect of short-term growth hormone administration

Abstract
Normal and diabetic rats were given daily injections of human growth hormone for four days (5 mg per rat per day). Injected rats showed no differences from uninjected controls with respect to kidney weight or renal content of protein, RNA or DNA. Kidney weight increased by 7% after two days of diabetes and by 20% after four days, but growth hormone caused no augmentation of the hypertrophy. It is concluded that growth hormone plays no role in the initiation of diabetic renal hypertrophy.