More side effects than any gain, HGH not safe

Stanford University Researchers said in a report on Tuesday that growth hormone injections, which people take to increase life span and fitness, has adverse affects on the well being and health of the individuals.

They held that it does not potentially contribute to the increase in life span and fitness, but causes side effects like joint swelling and pain, carpal tunnel syndrome and a tendency toward diabetes.

After amassing results from 31 studies, Dr. Hau Liu of Stanford and his colleagues at Stanford and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System elucidated the fact that there was no principle for the elderly to use the treatment.

"You are paying a lot of money for a therapy that may have minimal or no benefit and yet has a potential for some serious side effects," Liu said.

"The appropriate conclusion is that it is premature to be using human growth hormone for this purpose," said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was not involved in the study. "It is also illegal."

Olshansky and his colleagues reported in 2005 that as many as 20,000 to 30,000 people in America were taking the human growth hormone in 2004, and spending at least $1,000 per month. By some estimates, the market for HGH and related products totals more than $1.5 billion per year.

Books, magazine articles and Internet advertisements "claim that the benefits of HGH have been proved in thousands of studies in tens of thousands of patients," Olshansky said. "The fact is, that is not true. The actual number of person-years studied is very limited."

HGH is produced by genetically engineering techniques and is used to treat growth problems in children. In adults, it is used for wasting syndrome caused by AIDS and growth hormone deficiency.

All other uses in adults are specifically disallowed, but many physicians and patients are not aware of that, Olshansky said.

Liu and his colleagues studied reports that involved controlled treatments in adults, and found out that treatment for six months produced an increase of less than 5 pounds of muscle mass and a similar decrease in fat.

"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 per month," Liu said.

Growth hormone is secreted by the pituitary gland and is necessary for growth and cell production. In the past, GH was extracted from human pituitary gland and given to children with the hormone deficiency.

However, with progress in technology and science, GH is now produced synthetically and given to both children and adults for a variety of reasons. GH therapy has been a focus of social and ethical controversies for 50 years.

Other risks of the treatment are SCFE, which causes pain in the hip region; pseudotumor cerebri, which is manifested by severe headache, papilledema, nausea, and visual changes; fluid retention and edema; pancreatitis has been reported in a few patients too; altered body composition, which refers to the tendency of GH to build bone and muscle mass and reduce body fat; decrease in insulin sensitivity; and IGF1 levels may be raised above normal.

Serious problems like Type 2 diabetes has been reported in a few adolescents treated with GH. Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer, occurring in about 1 in 40,000 children each year. Because leukocytes have GH receptors, leukemia cases have been cautiously counted since synthetic GH was introduced.