Anti-ageing medicine - growth hormone therapy

ABSTRACT

Anti-ageing medicine is now recognised by the American Medical Association as a bona fide medical speciality. An Academy has been established and board certification is now available. With the prospect of an older population and increase life expectancy, anti-ageing medicine aims to prescribe a proactive, preventative course of medicine that will lead to longer, healthier, human lives, free of the disease processes now synonymous with advanced age. Technology exists today that can slow, stop and even reverse much of the deterioration and disease that typically accompanies the ageing process. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is one such technology. Perhaps the most exciting agent in HRT is human growth hormone (hGH). In 1990 Rudman et al, in their pioneering study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrated the age-reversal effects of hGH. Since then a number of studies have confirmed their findings and refined the technique. The use of hGH as an anti-ageing therapy is reviewed and the author's clinical experience is presented.(AU)