A hormone, ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, may be used as an effective treatment option for providing relief to older women with clinical frailty.
The finding was disclosed by a study presented by Penn Medicine researchers at ENDO, The Endocrine Society's 91st Annual Meeting.
Frailty is a common geriatric syndrome characterized by unintentional weight loss, exhaustion, weakness, and low levels of anabolic hormones prompting increase in risk of falls, hospitalizations, disability, and even death.
From Sciencedaily.com:
In the pilot study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and Penn's Institute on Aging, five frail women and five healthy women, all over the age of seventy, were randomized to receive an infusion of the hormone ghrelin or placebo. After a ghrelin transfusion, frail women in the study had a stronger, healthy appetite and increased anabolic hormone activity. The only side effect reported during the treatment was a transient sense of warmth that occurred in four women who received the ghrelin transfusion.
Now that safety and initial efficacy has been proven in this pilot study, larger follow-up studies will look at the potential therapeutic role of ghrelin or ghrelin mimetic agents in the frail population. At this time, these agents are only available for research use.
Anne Cappola, MD, ScM, Assistant Professor of Medicine in Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine, remarked that efforts for identifying ways to treat or eliminate common geriatric conditions has become highly important today due to the associated severe health consequences.
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