DRUG FAILS TO REVERSE AGING, STUDY SHOWS.

Byline: The New York Times

Human growth hormone, a drug once hailed as something able to make old men feel young again, has proved far more likely to cause puffy ankles and sore joints than to restore youth, according to a study being published today.

``We cannot recommend it,'' said the director of the study, Dr. Maxine Papadakis, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a staff physician at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. ``It's not the fountain of youth.''

In addition to being ineffective and causing unpleasant side effects, she said, the drug is expensive: Treatment costs $12,000 a year.

In 1990, an article in The New England Journal of Medicine reported striking changes in 12 men over age 60 who had taken the drug for six months. They gained lean body mass and lost fat, and their skin thickened, taking on a more youthful look.

The researchers who conducted that study, led by Dr. Daniel Rudman of the Medical College of Wisconsin, attributed aging in part to natural declines in the body's ability to secrete growth hormone, and they observed that six months of treatment with the substance appeared to cancel out 10 to 20 years of some age-related changes.

Although Rudman emphasized the need for further studies, his patients, interviewed by reporters, gave the hormone rave reviews, boasting of their energy, strength and rejuvenated complexions.

The authors of the latest study, in The Annals of Internal Medicine, sought to reproduce the 1990 study, and to take it a step further: to find out whether growth hormone could increase a person's strength, endurance and mental sharpness.

Papadakis and her colleagues studied 52 men, age 70 and older, all with levels of growth hormone normal for their age.

At the end of six months, the researchers found changes in body composition similar to what Rudman had reported.

But on a series of tests of muscle strength, endurance and mental ability, there were no improvements. In addition, the patients had side effects, Papadakis said. ``They had swelling in their ankles and lower legs, their joints ached, and their hands were stiff.''