Growth Hormones & Aging

For my end-of-term biology research assignment I've decided to do it on the effects of growth hormones in relation to the process of aging, or something along those lines. We're asked to be very specific in choosing our thesis so I don't know if that would be specific enough but hopefully as I research this things will just fall into place :)

Anyways because I'm sure you are all so interested in what I will be writing about, here are the websites I will be using. Actually the only reason I am posting this is so I have a copy of the websites, so this back-scratching is mutual.


"Can Growth Hormone Prevent Aging?" - The New England Journal Of Medicine
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/348/9/779

"Effects Of Human Growth Hormone In Men Over 60" full text - The New Englad Journal Of Medicine (long!)
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/348/9/779

"Growth Hormone And Sex Steroid Administration In Healthy Aged Woman And Men: A Randomized Controlled Trial" - The Journal Of The American Medical Association (an actual experiment!)
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/288/18/2282?ijkey=11886808572f187ea11f513bd9ad95e882efba49

"Growth Hormone Deficiency In Adulthood And The Effects Of Growth Hormone Replacement: A Review" - The Journal Of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/83/2/382?ijkey=6a5c32dfd6fc07776d736f037901a8134fb04c52

"Growth Hormone Replacement In Healthy Older Men Improves Body Composition But Not Functional Ability" - Annals Of Internal Medicine
http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/124/8/708?ijkey=44983727cc025cc665cc3c0469e65e28f53b8a8e

"Effects Of Six-Month Administration Of Recombinant Human Growth Hormone To Healthy Elderly Subjects" - National Center For Biotechnology Information (short!)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=9258378&dopt=Abstract

"Growth Hormone To Prevent Aging: Is It A Good Idea?" - CNN
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/HA/00030.html

"Growth Hormone And Aging" - Colostate.edu
http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/hypopit/ghaging.html

"Human Growth Hormone: Anti-Aging Wonder Drug?" - Yahoo! Health
http://health.yahoo.com/experts/healthnews/43/human-growth-hormone-anti-aging-wonder-drug

"Growth Hormone Ineffective for Anti-Aging, Studies Say" - ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ActiveAging/story?id=2797099&page=1

"Growth Hormone Is Not The Anti-Aging Bullet For Healty Adults" - EurekAlert
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-01/acop-ghi011107.php

This is excellent! If you read nothing else, read this:
"Growth Hormone Schemes And Scams" - Quackwatch
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/hgh.html

And this can't be used for citation purposes but does a good job into putting things into layman's terms:
"Can Human Growth Hormone Slow Aging?" - The Straight Dope
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040709.html


Florine, who mentioned it to me in the first place, described it as similar to "steroids for the elderly." She said the people who mostly use it are the baby boomers, who don't care what the side-effects are they just want to feel young again. As for me, I am looking forward to aging. In three months I will no longer qualify for an underage discount and it will be a long time before I'm able to go for the senior's....
*sigh*