Bone-specific alkaline phosphatase - a potential biomarker for skeletal growth assessment.

<bold>Objective</bold>: The present study was aimed to assess levels of serum Bone-specific alkaline phosphatase (BALP) and serum Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and comparing with cervical vertebral maturation index (CVMI) stages. <bold>Design</bold>: Cross-sectional study. <bold>Setting</bold>: Maulana Azad Institute of Dental Sciences, New Delhi, India. <bold>Participants</bold>: 150 subjects (75 males and 75 females) in the age group of 8-20 years. <bold>Methods</bold>: Subjects were divided into six CVMI stages. Enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay was performed for the estimation of serum BALP and serum IGF-1 levels. Mann-Whitney <italic>U</italic> test was performed to compare mean ranks of serum BALP and serum IGF-1 with different CVMI stages. Spearman correlation between serum BALP and serum IGF-1 was done across 6 CVMI stages. <bold>Results</bold>: Peak serum IGF-1 levels were found at CVMI stages 4 and 3 for males and females respectively. Peak levels for serum BALP were found at stage 3 for both genders with significant differences from other stages. A statistically significant correlation was seen between serum IGF-1 and serum BALP from CVMI stages 1 to 3 and 4 to 6 (<italic>p</italic> < .01). <bold>Conclusions</bold>: BALP showed promising results and can be employed as a potential biomarker for the estimation of growth status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]