Deprivation Dwarfism

Unhappy home conditions can cause not only mental retardation in children but stunted physical growth as well.

This syndrome only recently achieved the distinction of a medical name -- deprivation dwarfism. To treat its victims doctors simply take them away from their homes -- and it appears that even the institutional tenderness of a hospital can snap emotionally starved youngsters into a spurt of growth.

Doctors do not yet understand the meaning of this resurgence, and only now have two Philadelphia radiologists laid to rest one nagging medical fear.

In normal babies, cranial sutures (the spaces between the bones that make up the skull) are wide at birth and gradually narrow over the years. By the end of childhood the sutures close. But when a stunted child is being treated for deprivation dwarfism--and grows rapidly as a result--the sutures tend to widen instead. Usually, this is an ominous sign of rising fluid pressure within the skull, perhaps from a brain tumor.

Drs. Marie A. Capitanio and John A. Kirkpatrick of St. Christopher's Hospital for Children followed deprivation-dwarfism patients over a period of months, carefully comparing X rays of the children's skulls with those of more normal children. They report that the widening sutures are far from being warnings of trouble. While the Philadelphians are still not certain, they believe that the children's widening sutures are being expanded by the youngsters' healthy, growing brains.

Deprivation dwarfs often show the symptoms of their syndrome by the age of two. Extremely shy, unable to control their tempers, insatiably hungry and thirsty (drinking water out of toilet bowls is one sign), they crave bizarre food substitutes for the love they miss. Indeed, when doctors can find no organic cause for a stunted child, they look for strange behavior as the key to diagnosis. Although few parents are candid about an unhappy home, researchers have compiled a list of typical situations, including alcoholism, sexual incompatibility, illness, beatings, unemployment and unwanted pregnancies.

Why these children sometimes become dwarfs is unknown. Some researchers suspect the pituitary gland, the body's governor of growth. Others believe that continuous anxiety makes a victim's digestive system less able to absorb food. Although doctors see a connection between a baby's mental state and growth, they cannot yet show how an emotional problem becomes a physical one. They do know that no matter how deprivation dwarfs thrive in a hospital, the spurt often ends when they return to the homes that started the trouble.

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