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Plasma growth hormone (GH) was measured during sleep in 12 normal volunteers of various ages and in 6 patients with acromegaly. Four of the 6 volunteers over 50 yr of age failed to show a sleep-peak of GH. The presence or absence of a GH sleep-peak in the normals was not consistently related to the occurrence of slow-wave sleep. None of the 6 acromegalics showed the usual GH peak early in sleep.
Carlson et al. (Thu,) studied this question.