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Trendy Hormone Treatments No Passage to Graceful Aging
They did little to improve quality of life, study of seniors finds
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
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WEDNESDAY, Oct. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Forget the fountain of youth, at least for now, and at least in the form of hormone supplements.
Neither DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) nor low-dose testosterone replacement had any beneficial effect in elderly people, including quality of life, new research has found.
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"I don't find any reason for older people to take DHEA based on this study and no reason to do any extensive studies on it," said study author Dr. K. Sreekumaran Nair, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. His report is published in the Oct. 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Others, however, feel differently.
"This particular study is a small study, and it's only over two years, so I don't think it's the end of the story. We have to wait for more," said Dr. Barbara Paris, vice chairwoman of medicine and director of geriatrics at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City.
That being said, Paris also warned that people need to be careful of taking DHEA, in particular, as it is sold as a dietary supplement without need of a prescription.
"You don't know what you're getting with the pill," she said. "I don't think they're benign even though they're available without a prescription."
Both DHEA and testosterone have become celebrity hormones and are widely touted as anti-aging remedies. Best-selling author Gail Sheehy (Passages) profiled DHEA as a possible anti-aging miracle in Vanity Fair in 1996.
In 2002, however, gerontology experts issued a statement essentially calling supplements such as DHEA a waste of money.
The idea is simple: Because levels of growth hormones decline starting at about age 30, researchers have speculated that hormone replacement would have a slowing effect on aging. Long-living humans are also known to have relatively high levels of DHEA, but the bulk of research has been done in animals, and it's unclear how the findings might apply to humans.
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Copyright © 2006 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
Last updated 10/18/2006
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SOURCES: K. Sreekumaran Nair, M.D., Ph.D., professor, medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; Barbara Paris, M.D., vice chairwoman, medicine, and director, geriatrics, Maimonides Medical Center, New York City; S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D., professor, public health, University of Illinois, and senior research scientist, Center on Aging, University of Chicago; Bernard Roos, M.D., director, geriatric institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; Oct. 19, 2006, New England Journal of Medicine
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