Growth Hormone May Help Obesity
HealthDayNews — Growth hormone, which is now used to help children develop, could have a future for adults trying to lose weight.
Doctors at Saint Louis University gave small doses of growth hormone to 39 people who were about 40 percent overweight. The volunteer participants lost an average of slightly more than 5 pounds.
The precise reason for the weight loss, however, remains unclear.
“We do not know…whether they had a decrease in appetite or they had an increase in energy because they kept up their muscle mass and were able to exercise,” says lead researcher Dr. Stewart Albert, an internal medicine professor at the Missouri university, in a news release.
But the research team believes growth hormone “shows promise” for treating obesity. Growth hormone, they believe, helps control appetite and speeds up the metabolism, which burns calories. When people are obese, the amount of growth hormone in their bodies decreases, which contributes to the accumulation of fat and loss of muscle mass. That, in turn, may sap the person’s energy to exercise.
In the study, doctors replaced the amount of growth hormone that would have been in each individual’s body had that person not become obese. Participants got nightly injections of growth hormone for six months. Previous research had been unsuccessful, the doctors say, because the doses given were too high, creating bad side effects.
Results of the study were presented recently at the annual meeting of The Endocrine Society in Philadelphia.
—–
On the Net:
Saint Louis University Medical School
More science, space, and technology from RedNova
Copyright © 2003 HealthDay. All rights reserved. The information contained above is intended for general reference purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice or a medical exam. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health professional before starting any new treatment. Medical information changes rapidly and while Yahoo and its content providers make efforts to update the content on the site, some information may be out of date. No health information on Yahoo, including information about herbal therapies and other dietary supplements, is regulated or evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and therefore the information should not be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease without the supervision of a medical doctor.