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Trendy Hormone Treatments No Passage to Graceful Aging
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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> The new study reports on a two-year-long, randomized, double-blind study involving 87 elderly men with low levels of DHEA and testosterone and 57 elderly women with low levels of DHEA. All participants had to be at least 60 years of age.
The men were randomly assigned to receive DHEA, testosterone or a placebo. The women were randomly assigned to receive either DHEA or a placebo.
Although DHEA and testosterone levels were increased to what would be considered the "high normal" range for young people, there were no appreciable changes in volume of oxygen consumed per minute, muscle strength, sensitivity to insulin or quality of life, the study reported. There were no major adverse effects, either.
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Men receiving testosterone had a small increase in fat-free mass, and men receiving either testosterone or DHEA had an increase in bone mineral density at the femoral neck. Women taking DHEA had an increase in bone mineral density at the wrist but nowhere else.
Wrist bone mineral density is probably less important than other locations. "If you break your wrist, it's not the end of the world," Paris said. "The real concern in an 80-year-old is breaking your hip. That can be a death sentence, so even if I take a supplement and I don't get a wrist fracture, that's not really so significant."
Another problem, said Dr. Bernard Roos, director of the geriatric institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, is that "nobody's ever found that DHEA ever did anything that wasn't a secondary effect of either testosterone or estrogen." But, even here, the results can be highly variable. "It's unpredictable because different people convert DHEA to active hormones differently. It's almost like going to a lottery," Roos added.
In any event, experts called for more of this kind of study on anti-aging products in general.
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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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