Tallest man in the US dies at 38

Igor Vovkovinskiy, the tallest man in the United States, has died in Minnesota aged 38.

His family says the Ukrainian-born Vovkovinskiy died of heart disease on Friday at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

His mother, Svetlana Vovkovinska, an ICU nurse at Mayo, initially posted about his death on Facebook.

Vovkovinskiy went to the Mayo Clinic in 1989 as a child seeking treatment. A tumour pressing against his pituitary gland caused it to secrete abnormal levels of growth hormone.

He grew to become the tallest man in the US at two metres, 34.5 centimetres.

His older brother, Oleh Ladan of Brooklyn Park, told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that Vovkovinskiy was a celebrity when he arrived from Ukraine because of his size and the flickering Cold War of the late 1980s.

But Ladan said Vovkovinskiy "would have rather lived a normal life than be known".

When he was 27, Vovkovinskiy travelled to New York City and was declared America's tallest living person by a Guinness World Records adjudicator on The Dr Oz Show.

He edged out a sheriff's deputy in Virginia by one-third of an inch.

He was called out by president Barack Obama during a campaign rally in 2009, when the president noticed him near the stage wearing a T-shirt that read, "World's Biggest Obama Supporter".

He issued a plea in 2012 to cover the estimated $US16,000 cost for shoes that would not cause him crippling pain.

He said he had not owned a pair for years that fit his size 26, 10E feet. Thousands donated more than double what he needed. Reebok provided the custom shoes free.

Vovkovinskiy was born September 8, 1982, in Bar, Ukraine, to Vovkovinska and Oleksandr Ladan. His father died earlier.