Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: thedoc on 05/12/2016 04:53:01

Title: Could we stimulate the pituitary gland to make people grow? Or copy the hormones it uses to stimulate growth?
Post by: thedoc on 05/12/2016 04:53:01

Stan asked the Naked Scientists:
   From what I understand it is the pituitary gland which produces the hormones which causes you to grow taller and the hypothalamus which signals the pituitary gland when to produce these hormones though nerves.

Would it not be possible to either stimulate these nerves somehow to make short people grow taller, or determine exactly what chemical composition these hormones consists off, duplicate them, and apply them to the blood stream/in pills for the same effect?

What do you think?

Title: Re: Could we stimulate the pituitary gland to make people grow? Or copy the hormones it uses to stim
Post by: RD on 05/12/2016 05:15:20

Quote from: thedoc on 05/12/2016 04:53:01

... or determine exactly what chemical composition these hormones consists off, duplicate them, and apply them to the blood stream/in pills for the same effect?

Human growth hormone treatment has existed for half a century ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hormone_treatment#History

Title: Re: Could we stimulate the pituitary gland to make people grow? Or copy the hormones it uses to stim
Post by: evan_au on 05/12/2016 10:13:21

An unfortunate side-effect of using human growth hormone is that the brain-wasting prion disease CJD (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease) could be transferred to patients undergoing pituitary hormone therapy.

This was later reduced by better purification of the extracted hormone.
Even later, this risk was avoided entirely by using hormone grown in bacteria, using genetic engineering techniques.