- NEW YORK (AP) -- Adrienne Denese, a doctor on Manhattan's wealthy Upper
East Side, has skin as flawless as porcelain and a body as tight as a drum.
In fact, the forty-something blonde could easily pass for someone in her
20s.
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- Her secret? Regular doses of human growth
hormone, she says, along with exercise and a good diet. She started taking
the drug more than a year ago and now prescribes it for about 100 patients.
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- "I don't have to talk anybody into
it," says Denese, a specialist in rehabilitative therapy, whose patients
pay hundreds of dollars a week for the treatment.
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- For baby boomers with disposable income,
human growth hormone, or hGH, is the latest weapon in a growing arsenal
to combat aging. But while some doctors such as Denese promote it as the
latest youth elixir, others warn that there's been too little research
and the drug could be risky, high-priced snake oil.
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- The National Institute on Aging, an arm
of the federal National Institutes of Health, said in a report on hormone
therapy last year that too much hGH can result in diabetes, joint pain,
high blood pressure, swelling and carpal tunnel syndrome. There was no
proof that any supplement worked as an anti-aging remedy, it said.
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- The institute is running clinical trials
of hGH, with results expected in January.
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- Until recently, hGH was taken mainly
for developmental disorders such as dwarfism. Now, however, an estimated
5,000 Americans have begun taking it to look and feel younger, says Dr.
Ronald Klatz, president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine
in Chicago.
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- Made naturally by the pituitary gland,
human growth hormone helps regulate development and maintain tissues and
organs. The body produces more of it during adolescence, and less with
age.
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- "It's extremely seductive to conclude
that ... restoring those levels to back to what you had when you were young
would make you younger," says Dr. Huber Warner, acting associate director
of the National Institute on Aging's biology of aging program in Bethesda,
Md. "There's no evidence to logically support that conclusion."
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- Warner says he knows of only one small
study that showed potential benefits of hGH. Conducted in 1990 by Dr. Daniel
Rudman, the study of 12 men aged 61 to 81 who took hGH for six months saw
an increase in muscle mass, a decrease in flab and tighter skin.
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- It also showed, however, enlargement
of the breasts in some of the men.
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- But proponents say moderate doses of
hGH are safe.
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- "All these horrible side effects
are dose dependent. They don't exist in the anti-aging arena," Klatz
says. His academy, whose motto is "aging is not inevitable,"
was founded by a dozen doctors in 1993 and now has more than 4,000 member
physicians in 37 countries.
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- Among anti-aging therapies, Klatz says,
human growth hormone has "the most visible effects of not just slowing
but actually reversing the outward signs of aging. It will definitely have
profound effects in our society."
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- But it also is probably the least used
anti-aging therapy because of its high cost and the difficulty of administering
it, Klatz says. Patients must inject themselves almost daily with a half-inch
needle.
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- That hardly stops hGH's fans.
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- "My 10-year-old loves to give me
the injections," says Jan Griscom, a 43-year-old trainer in Las Vegas
who has taken the drug for about three months. She pays about $1,600 a
month for hGH treatments at Cenegenics, an anti-aging clinic.
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- Griscom says her wrinkles have diminished,
she can lift heavier weights, and she needs less sleep since she started
taking hGH.
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- She reports no negative side effects.
Neither does one of Denese's patients, a 41-year-old Manhattan jury consultant
who declined to give her name. They view hGH as a sound investment in good
health.
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- "It costs more to have a chronic,
long-term illness," says the jury consultant, who has been happily
shelling out $700 a month for a year for twice-daily injections. She says
her skin glows, her derriere no longer droops, and her energy level has
lifted.
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- Younger men are propositioning her again.
"That hasn't happened to me since I was 25," she says. As for
her sex drive, "I've noticed a return to an almost teenage-like state."
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- Judith Waters, a professor of psychology
at Farleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J., said the use of an unproven
drug as an anti-aging remedy shows how reluctant baby boomers are to grow
old.
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- "The kinds of risks people will
take are absolutely monumental," she says.
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- But she said cultural messages against
aging are more than skin deep. Some people may even fear losing their livelihood
as they age.
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- Denese predicts that human growth hormone,
which is not approved as an anti-aging remedy by the federal Food and Drug
Administration, would become cheaper and more accessible when its patent
expires in 2002.
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- "Everyone loves it," she says
of her Park Avenue patients.
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