by Playfuls Staff |
16th January 2007
Many have turned to human growth hormone (HGH) in optimistic wishes of a longer, healthier, younger-looking life.
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But is it really a miraculous youth-preserver? Its benefits have been pointed out as an efficient anti-aging therapy, a bona fide protector from age-related physical and psychological changes.
There is however a recent review of published studies which suggests that enthusiasm over the miracle elixir should be kept in check, as the side effects are more troublesome than magical.
The review is published in the current issue of the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine, and suggests that HGH provides few of the advertised benefits for adults who are healthy. “The Safety and Efficacy of Growth Hormone in the Healthy Elderly” is available on the Web at www.annals.org on January 16.
"The findings suggest that if someone is taking growth hormone to prevent or reverse aging, they should give it a second thought," said lead researcher Dr. Hau Liu, MD, a research fellow in endocrinology and health policy at Stanford University.
Dr. Liu added, “Growth hormone has been widely promoted as an anti-aging therapy. But the scant clinical experience of GH in the healthy elderly suggests that although GH may minimally alter body composition, it does not improve other clinically relevant outcomes such as bone density, cholesterol levels, stamina, and longevity in this population.
“And it's associated with high rates of adverse events. So, on the basis of available evidence, we cannot recommend growth hormone use for anti-aging in the healthy elderly.”
The results show that the synthetic hormone was associated with small changes in body composition but not in body weight or other clinically important outcomes.
What’s more worrisome is that people who took HGH had increased rates of unhealthy side effects such as soft tissue swelling, joint pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and, in men, abnormal breast development. They were also somewhat more likely to develop diabetes.
"This review suggests that there are modest or even minimal benefits associated with growth hormone, and HGH could be associated with significant side effects, including a trend toward diabetes and pre-diabetic conditions," commented Dr. Liu.
Human growth hormone is produced by the pituitary gland and has a significant role regulating growth during childhood and metabolism in adults.
In the United States, the FDA has approved the drug, now produced synthetically, to treat children with short stature and some other growth problems caused by childhood diseases.
The FDA has approved HGH to treat adults with growth hormone deficiency syndrome. Although the FDA prohibits drug companies from marketing HGH for anti-aging use,
thousands of adults take it regularly as an anti-aging drug. One estimate is that 20,000 to 30,000 adults used it for anti-aging purposes in the United States in 2004.
The products allegedly containing the extraordinary growth hormone come in all kinds of forms, as advertised on the Web: pills, sprays, injections, secretagogues, homeopathic formations, and GH releasers and enhancers. GH, often in conjunction with vitamins, testosterone and other hormones, is said to increase muscle strength and mass, decrease body fat, improve mood and motivation, increase exercise capacity, increase bone density and increase sexual potency in men.
"Everyone is looking for the fountain of youth," Dr. Liu said. "We wanted to see if there is any validity behind some of the claims made about growth hormone's anti-aging properties.
"Our biggest surprise was the general lack of research that had been done in this area. When we reviewed the scientific evidence, we found that there were really only about 500 patients involved in rigorous controlled trials. And only a few more than 200 actually received growth hormone.
"In our review, we found that growth hormone increased lean body mass or muscle mass by slightly more than two kilograms (that's a little over four pounds) and decreased fat mass by about two kilograms. But it had no other beneficial effects that we could see.
"If you went to a gym pretty regularly, you might get that change without breaking into too much of a sweat, and you wouldn't spend $1,000 to $2,000 a month on something that appears to have modest or minimal benefit and the probability of bad side effects," said Dr. Liu.
