The fountain of youth apparently does not yet come in a pill.
Widely used DHEA supplements and testosterone patches failed to deliver their touted anti-aging benefits in one of the first rigorous studies to test such claims in older men and women.
The substances did not improve the participants’ strength, their physical performance, or certain other measures of health.
“I don’t think there’s any case for administering these” to elderly people, said Dr. Sreekumaran Nair of the Mayo Clinic, lead author of the study, published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.
DHEA, a steroid that is a precursor to the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, is made by the body, but levels decline rapidly after age 25. DHEA supplements are marketed as rejuvenating agents, and U.S. sales hit $50 million last year.
Testosterone is available by prescription only.
The new study was done by researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and the University of Padua in Italy.
Over two years, the researchers studied 57 women and 87 men, all of them at least 60 years old. The women were given standard daily doses of DHEA or identical fake pills. The men were given real or fake DHEA, as well as a testosterone skin patch or a placebo patch.
Although DHEA and testosterone levels increased in the men and women who took the real treatments, there was no effect on physical performance, quality of life or the body’s ability to lower levels of blood sugar.
The testosterone treatments led to a small but significant increase in the amount of body weight free of fat, but that did not correspond to any improvements in strength. DHEA had no such effects.
No harmful side effects were detected. That is good news, but it does not mean the supplements are altogether safe, said Simon Yeung, manager of the Web site on supplements and integrative medicine at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Dr. Paul Stewart of England’s University of Birmingham said in an accompanying editorial that more research should be done on DHEA, and if it proves safe and effective, it should be regulated as a drug.
“Without a reversal of the current U.S. legislation, DHEA is likely to continue to be used inappropriately, and quackery will prevail,” Stewart wrote.
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