Growth Hormone and Aging

The number of people aged 60 and older outnumbers children younger than 5 years.1 For the first time in history, life expectancy exceeds 60 years worldwide.1 The United Nations General Assembly has declared the upcoming decade as a decade of healthy aging to improve older people's lives. An increasing number of anti-aging methods have been proposed to halt or slow senescence. These methods aim to establish a healthy life with a functional capacity that enables well-being in older age. One particular area of interest has been somatopause, a term that describes the expected decline in growth hormone (GH) secretion that occurs with age. Today, with the availability of recombinant GH, restoring GH to youthful levels in otherwise normal older adult populations has been an area of focus for many health care researchers. This study aims to elucidate the current knowledge and novel advances of GH in the aging population.