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Regaining Lost Youth: The Controversial and Colorful Beginnings of Hormone Replacement Therapy in Aging

Department of Cell and Tissue Biology, University of California at San Francisco.

Address correspondence to Arnold Kahn, Department of Cell and Tissue Biology, University of California at San Francisco, 521 Parnassus Ave., San Francisco, CA 94143-0640. E-mail: olbones{at}itsa.ucsf.edu

Abstract

The quest for regaining lost youth seems to have existed since the beginning of recorded history and has taken many forms. One strategy that began in earnest in the latter part of the 19th century and continues to have enormous momentum today is based on the notion that by replacing internally secreted substances, that is, hormones, that decline with age, the vitality and physical attributes associated with youth can be regained. Although the approach remains highly controversial as, for example, in "anti-aging medicine," it is no more controversial than it was many years ago when the work of three high profile investigators, Charles Eduoard Brown-Séquard, Eugen Steinach, and Serge Voronoff set the basis for using this strategy. In the case of all three individuals, the therapies they developed received widespread attention (including ridicule) in the popular press, were spread rapidly by practitioners of questionable training and ethical motivation, and finally and relatively quickly disappeared from common use. However, and ultimately more importantly, in the process of developing and promoting their therapies, these individuals made important contributions to the origins of endocrinology, the biology of sex, and establishment of hormone replacement therapy. It remains to be seen whether contemporary efforts using hormone replacement therapy to blunt and reverse aging have the same fate as their predecessors and make comparable important contributions to biology and medicine.