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Study Challenges “Love Hormone” Oxytocin’s Reputation As the Key To Pair Bonding
New research from the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford Medicine is challenging the long-held belief that the receptor for oxytocin, known as the “love hormone,” is essential for forming social bonds. The study, published in the journal Neuron, found that prairie voles bred without oxytocin receptors showed similar monogamous mating, attachment, and parenting behaviors to regular voles, and even gave birth and produced milk albeit in smaller quantities. This contradicts the previous idea that oxytocin is critical to these social behaviors and raises new questions about the role of the hormone in bonding.
Removing the Oxytocin Receptor Does Not Interfere with Monogamy or Giving Birth
Turning a decades-old dogma on its head, new research from scientists at University of California, San Francisco and Stanford Medicine shows that the receptor for oxytocin, a hormone considered essential to forming social bonds, may not play the critical role that scientists have assigned to it for the past 30 years.
In the study, published on January 27, 2023, in the journal Neuron, the team found that prairie voles bred without receptors for oxytocin and showed the same monogamous mating, attachment, and parenting behaviors as regular voles. In addition, females without oxytocin receptors gave birth and produced milk, though in smaller quantities, than ordinary female voles.
The results indicate that the biology underlying pair bonding and parenting isn’t purely dictated by the receptors for oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the “love hormone.”
“While oxytocin has been considered ‘Love Potion #9,’ it seems that potions 1 through 8 might be sufficient,” said psychiatrist Devanand Manoli, MD, PhD, a senior author of the paper and member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “This study tells us that oxytocin is likely just one part of a much more complex genetic program.”
This is a photograph of two prairie voles. Credit: Nastacia Goodwin
CRISPR Voles Pack a Surprise
Because prairie voles are one of the few mammalian
To the researchers’ surprise, the mutant voles formed pair bonds just as readily as normal voles.
“The patterns were indistinguishable,” said Manoli. “The major behavioral traits that were thought to be dependent on oxytocin – sexual partners huddling together and rejecting other potential partners as well as parenting by mothers and fathers – appear to be completely intact in the absence of its receptor.”
Labor and Lactation
Even more surprising for Manoli and Shah than the pair bonding was the fact that a significant percentage of the female voles were able to give birth and provide milk for their pups.
Oxytocin is likely to have a role in both birth and lactation, but one that is more nuanced than previously thought, Manoli said. Female voles without receptors proved perfectly capable of giving birth, on the same timeframe and in the same way as the regular animals, even though labor has been thought to rely on oxytocin.
The results help to clear up some of the mystery surrounding the hormone’s role in childbirth: Oxytocin is commonly used to induce labor but blocking its activity in mothers who experience premature labor isn’t better than other approaches for halting contractions.
When it came to producing milk and feeding pups, however, the researchers were taken aback. Oxytocin binding to its receptor has been considered essential for milk ejection and parental care for many decades, but half of the mutant females were able to nurse and wean their pups successfully, indicating that oxytocin signaling plays a role, but it is less vital than previously thought.
“This overturns conventional wisdom about lactation and oxytocin that’s existed for a much longer time than the pair bonding association,” said Shah. “It’s a standard in medical textbooks that the milk letdown reflex is mediated by the hormone, and here we are saying, ‘Wait a second, there’s more to it than that.’”
Hope for Social Connection
Manoli and Shah focused on understanding the neurobiology and molecular mechanisms of pair bonding because it is thought to hold the key to unlocking better treatments for psychiatric conditions, such as autism and schizophrenia, that interfere with a person’s ability to form or maintain social bonds.
Over the past decade, much hope was pinned on clinical trials using oxytocin to address those conditions. But those results were mixed, and none has illuminated a clear path to improvement.
The researchers said their study strongly suggests that the current model – a single pathway or molecule being responsible for social attachment –is oversimplified. This conclusion makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, they said, given the importance of attachment to the perpetuation of many social species.
“These behaviors are too important to survival to hinge on this single point of potential failure,” said Manoli. “There are likely other pathways or other genetic wiring to allow for that behavior. Oxytocin receptor signaling could be one part of that program, but it’s not the be-all end-all.”
The discovery points the researchers down new paths to improving the lives of people struggling to find social connection.
“If we can find the key pathway that mediates attachment and bonding behavior,” Shah said, “We’ll have an eminently druggable target for alleviating symptoms in autism, schizophrenia, many other psychiatric disorders.”
For more on this research, see Were We Wrong About the “Love Hormone” Oxytocin?
Reference: “Oxytocin receptor is not required for social attachment in prairie voles” by Kristen M. Berendzen, Ruchira Sharma, Maricruz Alvarado Mandujano, Yichao Wei, Forrest D. Rogers, Trenton C. Simmons, Adele M.H. Seelke, Jessica M. Bond, Rose Larios, Nastacia L. Goodwin, Michael Sherman, Srinivas Parthasarthy, Isidero Espineda, Joseph R. Knoedler, Annaliese Beery, Karen L. Bales, Nirao M. Shah and Devanand S. Manoli, 27 January 2023, Neuron.
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.12.011
Additional authors include: Ruchira Sharma, Rose Larios, Nastacia Goodwin, Michael Sherman and Isidero Espineda of UCSF, Maricruz Alvarado Mandujano, YiChao Wei, Srinivas Parthasarthy and Joseph Knoedler of Stanford, and Forrest Rogers, Trenton Simmons, Adele Seelke, Jessica Bond, and Karen Bales of UC Davis, and Annaliese Beery of UC Berkeley.
This work was supported by NIH grants R01MH123513, R01MH108319, DP1MH099900 and R25MH060482, NSF grant, 1556974, and philanthropy. For details, see the study.
A new study casts doubt on oxytocin’s role as a ‘love hormone’
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
It’s known as the love hormone, but a new study suggests that label is misleading. NPR’s Jon Hamilton reports on what scientists are learning about oxytocin.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: When romance is in the air, a couple’s oxytocin levels rise. That’s true for both people and prairie voles, mouse-like rodents that mate for life and are often used to study human behavior. Dr. Dev Manoli, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, says prairie vole couples share a nest and even co-parent.
DEV MANOLI: One of the behaviors that’s really, you know, sort of the most adorable is this huddling behavior, just sort of huddling with each other. They’ll sometimes groom. Sometimes they just fall asleep because it’s very calming. And that’s very specific to the pair-bonded partner.
HAMILTON: Decades of research has suggested that oxytocin is critical to that sort of behavior. So Manoli and a team of scientists did an experiment designed to disrupt pair bonding. They removed fertilized eggs from female prairie voles and edited the genes to neutralize the effects of oxytocin. After that, Manoli says, they let the cells grow.
MANOLI: So we culture them for a few days and then put them into what’s called a pseudo-pregnant female.
HAMILTON: An animal that’s hormonally ready to carry an embryo. The result was pups that appeared normal. And when these pups grew up, they formed pair bonds just like other prairie voles. Manoli says females were even able to produce milk for their offspring, a process usually mediated by oxytocin.
MANOLI: We were shocked because that was really, really not what we expected. And, you know, my initial response was, OK, we have to do this three more times because we need to be sure that this is 100% real. But also, what’s going on?
HAMILTON: Repeated experiments confirmed the finding, which appears in the journal Neuron. Manoli says it’s still a mystery how pair bonding occurs in the absence of oxytocin. But he says the study makes one thing clear.
MANOLI: Because of evolution, the parts of the brain and the circuitry that are responsible for pair bond formation don’t really rely on oxytocin. They don’t need it.
HAMILTON: In other words, Manoli says…
MANOLI: Oxytocin might be “Love Potion No. 9,” but one through eight are still in play, right? There’s more there than that one entry point.
HAMILTON: Manoli says in retrospect, the result makes sense because pair bonding is essential to a prairie vole’s survival, and evolution tends to favor redundant systems for critical behaviors. He says the result also may help explain why giving oxytocin to children with autism spectrum disorder doesn’t reliably improve their social functioning.
MANOLI: There’s not a single pathway, but rather these complex behaviors have really complicated genetics and complicated neural mechanisms.
HAMILTON: Many scientists who study oxytocin say they’re uncomfortable with the term love hormone. Sue Carter of the University of Virginia and Indiana University helped discover the link between oxytocin and monogamy in prairie voles. But she says she never assumed the hormone was acting alone.
SUE CARTER: The process of forming a secure social bond lasting for a very long period of time is too important to restrict to a single molecule.
HAMILTON: Carter says a different molecule called vasopressin also contributes to social bonding, and there may be others, she says, though she believes oxytocin is the major player.
CARTER: We can live without fine clothing. We can even live without too much physical protection. But we cannot live without love.
HAMILTON: Which may be the reason we can love without oxytocin.
Jon Hamilton, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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Fresh Questions About Oxytocin as the ‘Love Hormone’ Behind Pair Bonding
Summary: The “love hormone” oxytocin may not play as critical a role in bonding as previously believed. Removing the oxytocin receptor in animal models still resulted in monogamous mating, attachment, and parental bonding behaviors, although females without the receptor produced milk in smaller quantities. Findings reveal parenting and bonding aren’t purely dictated by oxytocin receptors.
Source: UCSF
Turning a decades-old dogma on its head, new research from scientists at UC San Francisco and Stanford Medicine shows that the receptor for oxytocin, a hormone considered essential to forming social bonds, may not play the critical role that scientists have assigned to it for the past 30 years.
In the study, appearing Jan. 27, 2023 in Neuron, the team found that prairie voles bred without receptors for oxytocin and showed the same monogamous mating, attachment, and parenting behaviors as regular voles. In addition, females without oxytocin receptors gave birth and produced milk, though in smaller quantities, than ordinary female voles.
The results indicate that the biology underlying pair bonding and parenting isn’t purely dictated by the receptors for oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the “love hormone.”
“While oxytocin has been considered ‘Love Potion #9,’ it seems that potions 1 through 8 might be sufficient,” said psychiatrist Devanand Manoli, MD, PhD, a senior author of the paper and member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “This study tells us that oxytocin is likely just one part of a much more complex genetic program.”
CRISPR Voles Pack a Surprise
Because prairie voles are one of the few mammalian species known to form lifelong monogamous relationships, researchers study them to better understand the biology of social bonding.
Studies in the 1990s using drugs that prevent oxytocin from binding to its receptor found that voles were unable to pair bond, giving rise to the idea that the hormone is essential to forming such attachments.
The current project emerged from shared interests between Manoli and co-senior author and neurobiologist Nirao Shah, MD, PhD, then at UCSF and now at Stanford Medicine. Shah had been interested in the biology of oxytocin and social attachment in prairie voles since teaching about the oxytocin studies decades earlier. Manoli, who wanted to investigate the neurobiology of social bonding, joined Shah’s lab in 2007 as a postdoctoral scholar.
For this study, 15 years in the making, the two applied new genetic technologies to confirm if oxytocin binding to its receptor was indeed the factor behind pair bonding. They used CRISPR to generate prairie voles that lack functional oxytocin receptors. Then, they tested the mutant voles to see whether they could form enduring partnerships with other voles.
To the researchers’ surprise, the mutant voles formed pair bonds just as readily as normal voles.
“The patterns were indistinguishable,” said Manoli. “The major behavioral traits that were thought to be dependent on oxytocin – sexual partners huddling together and rejecting other potential partners as well as parenting by mothers and fathers – appear to be completely intact in the absence of its receptor.”
Labor and Lactation
Even more surprising for Manoli and Shah than the pair bonding was the fact that a significant percentage of the female voles were able to give birth and provide milk for their pups.
Oxytocin is likely to have a role in both birth and lactation, but one that is more nuanced than previously thought, Manoli said. Female voles without receptors proved perfectly capable of giving birth, on the same timeframe and in the same way as the regular animals, even though labor has been thought to rely on oxytocin.
The results help to clear up some of the mystery surrounding the hormone’s role in childbirth: Oxytocin is commonly used to induce labor but blocking its activity in mothers who experience premature labor isn’t better than other approaches for halting contractions.
When it came to producing milk and feeding pups, however, the researchers were taken aback. Oxytocin binding to its receptor has been considered essential for milk ejection and parental care for many decades, but half of the mutant females were able to nurse and wean their pups successfully, indicating that oxytocin signaling plays a role, but it is less vital than previously thought.
“This overturns conventional wisdom about lactation and oxytocin that’s existed for a much longer time than the pair bonding association,” said Shah. “It’s a standard in medical textbooks that the milk letdown reflex is mediated by the hormone, and here we are saying, ‘Wait a second, there’s more to it than that.’”
Hope for Social Connection
Manoli and Shah focused on understanding the neurobiology and molecular mechanisms of pair bonding because it is thought to hold the key to unlocking better treatments for psychiatric conditions, such as autism and schizophrenia, that interfere with a person’s ability to form or maintain social bonds.
Over the past decade, much hope was pinned on clinical trials using oxytocin to address those conditions. But those results were mixed, and none has illuminated a clear path to improvement.
The researchers said their study strongly suggests that the current model – a single pathway or molecule being responsible for social attachment –is oversimplified. This conclusion makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, they said, given the importance of attachment to the perpetuation of many social species.
“These behaviors are too important to survival to hinge on this single point of potential failure,” said Manoli. “There are likely other pathways or other genetic wiring to allow for that behavior. Oxytocin receptor signaling could be one part of that program, but it’s not the be-all end-all.”
See also
The discovery points the researchers down new paths to improving the lives of people struggling to find social connection.
“If we can find the key pathway that mediates attachment and bonding behavior,” Shah said, “We’ll have an eminently druggable target for alleviating symptoms in autism, schizophrenia, many other psychiatric disorders.”
Authors: Additional authors include: Ruchira Sharma, Rose Larios, Nastacia Goodwin, Michael Sherman and Isidero Espineda of UCSF, Maricruz Alvarado Mandujano, YiChao Wei, Srinivas Parthasarthy and Joseph Knoedler of Stanford, and Forrest Rogers, Trenton Simmons, Adele Seelke, Jessica Bond, and Karen Bales of UC Davis, and Annaliese Beery of UC Berkeley.
Funding: This work was supported by NIH grants R01MH123513, R01MH108319, DP1MH099900 and R25MH060482, NSF grant, 1556974, and philanthropy. For details, see the study.
About this bonding and oxytocin research news
Author: Robin Marks
Source: UCSF
Contact: Robin Marks – UCSF
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“Oxytocin receptor is not required for social attachment in prairie voles” by Devanand Manoli et al. Neuron
Abstract
Oxytocin receptor is not required for social attachment in prairie voles
Highlights
- Prairie voles lacking oxytocin receptor (Oxtr) generated with CRISPR targeting
- Oxtr−/− voles form pair bonds or social attachments
- Oxtr−/− voles show parental behavior
- Oxtr−/− females nurse many of their pups to weaning
Summary
Prairie voles are among a small group of mammals that display long-term social attachment between mating partners. Many pharmacological studies show that signaling via the oxytocin receptor (Oxtr) is critical for the display of social monogamy in these animals. We used CRISPR mutagenesis to generate three different Oxtr-null mutant prairie vole lines.
Oxtr mutants displayed social attachment such that males and females showed a behavioral preference for their mating partners over a stranger of the opposite sex, even when assayed using different experimental setups.
Mothers lacking Oxtr delivered viable pups, and parents displayed care for their young and raised them to the weanling stage.
Together, our studies unexpectedly reveal that social attachment, parturition, and parental behavior can occur in the absence of Oxtr signaling in prairie voles.
Hormone Replacement Therapy Could Ward off Alzheimer’s Among At-Risk Women
Summary: Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) use was associated with better cognition, memory, and larger brain volume in women who carry the Alzheimer’s associated APOE4 genetic variant.
Source: University of East Anglia
Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) could help prevent Alzheimer’s Dementia among women at risk of developing the disease—according to University of East Anglia research.
The study shows that HRT use is associated with better memory, cognition and larger brain volumes in later life among women carrying the APOE4 gene—the strongest risk factor gene for Alzheimer’s disease.
The research team found that HRT was most effective when introduced early in the menopause journey during perimenopause.
Prof Anne-Marie Minihane, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School and director of the Norwich Institute for Healthy Aging at UEA, led the study in collaboration with Prof Craig Ritchie at the University of Edinburgh.
Prof Minihane said, “We know that 25 percent of women in the UK are carriers of the APOE4 gene and that almost two thirds of Alzheimer’s patients are women.
“In addition to living longer, the reason behind the higher female prevalence is thought to be related to the effects of menopause and the impact of the APOE4 genetic risk factor being greater in women.
“We wanted to find out whether HRT could prevent cognitive decline in at-risk APOE4 carriers.”
The research team studied data from 1,178 women participating in the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia initiative—which was set up to study participants’ brain health over time.
The project spanned 10 countries and tracked participants’ brains from ‘healthy’ to a diagnosis of dementia in some. Participants were included if they were over 50 and dementia-free.
The research team studied their results to analyse the impact of HRT on women carrying the APOE4 genotype.
Dr. Rasha Saleh, also from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said, “We found that HRT use is associated with better memory and larger brain volumes among at-risk APOE4 gene carriers. The associations were particularly evident when HRT was introduced early—during the transition to menopause, known as perimenopause.
“This is really important because there have been very limited drug options for Alzheimer’s disease for 20 years and there is an urgent need for new treatments.
“The effects of HRT in this observation study, if confirmed in an intervention trial, would equate to a brain age that is several years younger.”
Prof Anne Marie Minihane said, “Our research looked at associations with cognition and brain volumes using MRI scans. We did not look at dementia cases, but cognitive performance and lower brain volumes are predictive of future dementia risk.
Prof Michael Hornberger, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said, : “It’s too early to say for sure that HRT reduces dementia risk in women, but our results highlight the potential importance of HRT and personalised medicine in reducing Alzheimer’s risk.
“The next stage of this research will be to carry out an intervention trial to confirm the impact of starting HRT early on cognition and brain health. It will also be important to analyse which types of HRT are most beneficial,” he added.
Prof Craig Ritchie, from the University of Edinburgh, said, “This important finding from the EPAD Cohort highlights the need to challenge many assumptions about early Alzheimer’s disease and its treatment, especially when considering women’s brain health.
See also
“An effect on both cognition and brain changes on MRI supports the notion that HRT has tangible benefit. These initial findings need replication however in other populations.”
About this genetics and Alzheimer’s disease research news
Author: Press Office
Source: University of East Anglia
Contact: Press Office – University of East Anglia
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“Hormone Replacement Therapy is associated with improved cognition and larger brain volumes in at risk APOE4 women: results from the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease (EPAD) cohort” by Anne Marie Minihane et al. Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy
Abstract
Hormone Replacement Therapy is associated with improved cognition and larger brain volumes in at risk APOE4 women: results from the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease (EPAD) cohort
Background
The risk of dementia is higher in women than men. The metabolic consequences of estrogen decline during menopause accelerate neuropathology in women. The use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in the prevention of cognitive decline has shown conflicting results. Here we investigate the modulating role of APOE genotype and age at HRT initiation on the heterogeneity in cognitive response to HRT.
Methods
The analysis used baseline data from participants in the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (EPAD) cohort (total n= 1906, women= 1178, 61.8%). Analysis of covariate (ANCOVA) models were employed to test the independent and interactive impact of APOE genotype and HRT on select cognitive tests, such as MMSE, RBANS, dot counting, Four Mountain Test (FMT), and the supermarket trolley test (SMT), together with volumes of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) regions by MRI. Multiple linear regression models were used to examine the impact of age of HRT initiation according to APOE4 carrier status on these cognitive and MRI outcomes.
Results
APOE4 HRT users had the highest RBANS delayed memory index score (P-APOE*HRT interaction = 0.009) compared to APOE4 non-users and to non-APOE4 carriers, with 6–10% larger entorhinal (left) and amygdala (right and left) volumes (P-interaction= 0.002, 0.003, and 0.005 respectively). Earlier introduction of HRT was associated with larger right (standardized β= −0.555, p=0.035) and left hippocampal volumes (standardized β= −0.577, p=0.028) only in APOE4 carriers.
Conclusion
HRT introduction is associated with improved delayed memory and larger entorhinal and amygdala volumes in APOE4 carriers only. This may represent an effective targeted strategy to mitigate the higher life-time risk of AD in this large at-risk population subgroup. Confirmation of findings in a fit for purpose RCT with prospective recruitment based on APOE genotype is needed to establish causality.
A Single Hormone in Men May Predict Their Future Health : ScienceAlert
A variety of age-related illnesses – including bone weakness, sexual dysfunction, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease – can be predicted by a single hormone that appears at a steady level in men across the course of their lives, new research reveals.
That hormone is INSL3, and it first appears during puberty. From then on, its levels only dip slightly in old age. This consistency and the early age at which it appears makes INSL3 valuable to scientists – and possibly men’s health.
Someone with lower INSL3 levels at a young age is probably going to have lower levels of the hormone in old age too, the new research shows. If that translates to a greater risk of health complications, as the study suggests may be the case, those health risks could potentially be managed many years earlier.
“Understanding why some people are more likely to develop disability and disease as they age is vital so that interventions can be found to ensure people not only live a long life but also a healthy life as they age,” says reproductive endocrinologist Ravinder Anand-Ivell from the University of Nottingham in the UK.
“Our hormone discovery is an important step in understanding this and will pave the way for not only helping people individually but also helping to ease the care crisis we face as a society.”
INSL3 is made by the same cells in the testes that produce testosterone; unlike testosterone, INSL3 doesn’t fluctuate as men become adults.
To monitor the level of INSL3 in the blood, researchers took samples from more than 2,200 men across eight different regional centers in Europe. The men’s INSL3 levels stayed steady over time and also varied significantly between individuals, enough to tease apart health risks.
Researchers suggest that INSL3 levels in the blood reliably correlate to the number and health of the Leydig cells in the testes – having fewer of these cells and less testosterone has also been linked to numerous health issues in later life.
“Now we know the important role this hormone plays in predicting disease and how it varies amongst men, we are turning our attention to finding out what factors have the most influence on the level of INSL3 in the blood,” says molecular endocrinologist Richard Ivell from the University of Nottingham.
“Preliminary work suggests early life nutrition may play a role, but many other factors such as genetics or exposure to some environmental endocrine disruptors may play a part.”
Across nine morbidity categories that participants reported in questionnaires, including cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, INSL3 was linked to an increased risk of morbidity in eight of them (only depression wasn’t found to have any correlation in this study).
But when the researchers adjusted for other hormonal and lifestyle factors, such as BMI and smoking status, most of these associations with INSL3 were lost, except for high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
And testing whether INSL3 levels in blood samples from a subset of men could foreshadow health outcomes roughly four years later, lower hormone levels were associated with seven of the nine comorbidity categories. But again, this was without taking into account other factors.
One area the scientists are keen to explore in future studies is how INSL3 relates to sexual health, with its strong association with testosterone, but that wasn’t included in detail in this particular piece of research.
Future studies should also “focus on longer time periods to determine whether INSL3 measured in younger or middle-aged men… is truly predictive of the later appearance of age-dependent health issue,” the researchers conclude.
If the link between INSL3 and these health risks is established by further studies, and scientists are able to pinpoint exactly why the link exists, it means preparations can be made much earlier to try and spot – and stop – a variety of age-related health problems from happening.
“The holy grail of aging research is to reduce the fitness gap that appears as people age,” says Anand-Ivell.
The research has been published in Frontiers in Endocrinology.
Rise of growth hormone use on children in China alarms health experts
Chinese health experts are raising concerns about the growing interest among parents to use synthetic human growth hormones on their children.
Local media outlets cited by The Epoch Times reported that the Beijing Children’s Hospital had almost doubled its endocrinologist consultations since July, over 90 percent of which were parents inquiring about their children’s height. In some of the cases, the parents even ask the specialists directly to inject their children with “height boosting shots.”
The injections, which produce bone growth and development similar to results from the growth hormone produced naturally in humans, are prescribed by specialists to children whose growth plates were not properly fused and are found to have growth hormone deficiencies. The treatment is also offered to children with known medical conditions, such as Turner syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome and short bowel syndrome.
The demand for “height boosting shots” has become such a growing trend in other parts of China in recent years that health experts are sounding the alarm for potential abuse of growth hormone prescriptions.
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According to Nikkei Asia, pharmaceutical companies in China have been feeding off of this spike in demand from parents. These companies also provide rebates, resulting in some hospitals overprescribing the growth hormones to anxious parents.
Based on 2019 figures, annual treatments for growth hormone powder injections cost almost 19,000 yuan (approximately $2,600), liquid injections cost around 42,000 yuan (approximately $5,800) and long-acting injections cost about 196,000 yuan (approximately $27,000). Such treatments usually take 2-5 years to complete.
The growing demand has significantly benefited China’s biggest growth hormone company, GeneScience Pharmaceuticals (GeneSci), which grew its annual revenue over four times from 2016 to 2020.
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When large public hospitals turn parents down, many reportedly resort to seeking growth hormone prescriptions from private hospitals. Some go as far as buying the hormone from other channels and injecting their children themselves.
Dr. Lin Ming, a specialist at Wuhan Union Hospitals’ Pediatric Endocrinology Department, lamented that parents have become too concerned about their children’s height.
“Only a very small number of people really need to use growth hormone therapy; most children only need a nutritious and balanced diet, enough sleep, and proper exercise, and do not need growth hormones to increase their height,” Ming told The Epoch Times.
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A case highlighted by Endocrinology at Zhejiang University Children’s Hospital Deputy Director Huang Ke involved a mother who spent 480,000 yuan (approximately $66,000) in total for her son’s hormone injection treatments only for him to grow just a centimeter (0.4 inches).
Another couple claimed to have spent over 500,000 yuan (approximately $69,000) to treat their child with growth hormones for two and a half years.
Experts warn against healthy children undergoing such costly treatments since there is no guarantee they will work. For cases where the treatment actually works, the most they can grow is around 4 to 6 centimeters (1.57 inches to 2.36 inches), according to the Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital.
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Tianjin’s 4th Central Hospital Pediatrics Director Li Sujie highlighted the risk of improper use of growth hormone as current treatments are geared towards those with pathological or idiopathic short stature and not for children within the normal height range.
Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital echoed such sentiments and cautioned parents against the treatments as they may cause adverse reactions, such as an accelerated puberty development and growth plate fusion.
Specialists warned that improper handling of dosage in healthy children can also result in edema, cardiomyopathy, insulin resistance, stroke, increased eye pressure, arthritis, idiopathic increased intracranial pressure and gynecomastia.
Featured Image via 黃瑽寧愛+好醫生
Scientists Discover That the “Love Hormone” Could Actually Heal Your Heart
The study found that oxytocin had heart-healing properties.
Researchers have found that oxytocin, sometimes known as the “love hormone,” may one day help heal damaged hearts after a heart attack.
The neurohormone oxytocin is widely recognized for fostering social connections and producing pleasurable feelings, such as those associated with sex, exercise, or art. However, the hormone has a variety of other functions, such as the regulation of lactation and uterine contractions in females, and the regulation of ejaculation, sperm transport, and testosterone production in males.
Now, scientists from Michigan State University have demonstrated that oxytocin has yet another, previously unknown, function in zebrafish and human cell cultures: it stimulates stem cells from the heart’s outer layer (epicardium) to migrate into its middle layer (myocardium), where they develop into cardiomyocytes, the muscle cells that cause heart contractions. This finding could one day be used to promote the regeneration of the human heart after a heart attack. The researchers’ findings were recently published in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.
“Here we show that oxytocin, a neuropeptide also known as the love hormone, is capable of activating heart repair mechanisms in injured hearts in zebrafish and human cell cultures, opening the door to potential new therapies for heart regeneration in humans,” said Dr. Aitor Aguirre, an assistant professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering of Michigan State University, and the study’s senior author.
Stem-like cells can replenish cardiomyocytes
After a heart attack, cardiomyocytes often die off in large numbers. They cannot replenish themselves since they are highly specialized cells. Previous research has revealed, however, that a subset of cells in the epicardium may be reprogrammed to become stem-like cells known as Epicardium-derived Progenitor Cells (EpiPCs), which can regenerate not only cardiomyocytes but also other kinds of heart cells.
“Think of the EpiPCs as the stonemasons that repaired cathedrals in Europe in the Middle Ages,” explained Aguirre.
Unfortunately, under natural conditions, the production of EpiPCs is inefficient for human heart regeneration.
Zebrafish could teach us how to regenerate hearts more efficiently
Enter the zebrafish: famous for their extraordinary capacity for regenerating organs, including the brain, retina, internal organs, bone, and skin. They don’t suffer heart attacks, but its many predators are happy to take a bite out of any organ, including the heart – so zebrafish can regrow their heart when as much as a quarter of it has been lost. This is done partly by proliferation of cardiomyocytes, but also by EpiPCs. But how do the EpiPCs of zebrafish repair the heart so efficiently? And can we find a ‘magic bullet’ in zebrafish that could artificially boost the production of EpiPCs in humans?
Yes, and this ‘magic bullet’ appears to be oxytocin, argue the authors.
To reach this conclusion, the authors found that in zebrafish, within three days after cryoinjury – injury due to freezing – to the heart, the expression of the messenger
Aguirre said: “These results show that it is likely that the stimulation by oxytocin of EpiPC production is evolutionary conserved in humans to a significant extent. Oxytocin is widely used in the clinic for other reasons, so repurposing for patients after heart damage is not a long stretch of the imagination. Even if heart regeneration is only partial, the benefits for patients could be enormous.”
Aguirre concluded: “Next, we need to look at oxytocin in humans after cardiac injury. Oxytocin itself is short-lived in circulation, so its effects in humans might be hindered by that. Drugs specifically designed with a longer half-life or more potency might be useful in this setting. Overall, pre-clinical trials in animals and clinical trials in humans are necessary to move forward.”
Reference: “Oxytocin promotes epicardial cell activation and heart regeneration after cardiac injury” by Aaron H. Wasserman, Amanda R. Huang, Yonatan R. Lewis-Israeli, McKenna D. Dooley, Allison L. Mitchell, Manigandan Venkatesan and Aitor Aguirre, 30 September 2022, Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.
DOI: 10.3389/fcell.2022.985298
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Spectrum-MSU Foundation.
‘Love hormone’ oxytocin may help mend broken hearts (literally), lab study suggests
Oxytocin, sometimes called the “love hormone,” may help heal broken hearts — literally. In a new study of zebrafish and human cells, scientists found that the brain-made hormone may help heart tissue regenerate after injury and, in theory, could someday be used in the treatment of heart attacks, according to the researchers.
Because the new study was conducted in fish tanks and lab dishes, however, this theoretical treatment is still far from realization.
Oxytocin has been nicknamed the “love” or “cuddle” hormone for its known role in forging social bonds and trust between people, and its levels often rise when people cuddle, have sex or orgasm. However, the so-called love hormone also serves many other functions in the body, such as triggering contractions during childbirth and promoting lactation afterward. Oxytocin also helps guard the cardiovascular system from injury by lowering blood pressure, reducing inflammation and diffusing free radicals, a reactive byproduct of normal cell metabolism, according to a 2020 review in the journal Frontiers in Psychology (opens in new tab).
The new study, published Friday (Sept. 30) in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology (opens in new tab), highlights yet another potential benefit of oxytocin: At least in zebrafish, the hormone helps the heart replace injured and dead cardiomyocytes, the muscle cells that power heart contractions. Early results in human cells hint that oxytocin could stimulate similar effects in people, if delivered with the right timing and dose.
Related: Staying hydrated may reduce the risk of heart failure
The heart has a very limited ability to repair or replace damaged or dead tissue, the study authors noted in their report. But several studies suggest that after an injury, like a heart attack, a subset of cells in the heart’s outermost membrane, called the epicardium, don a new identity. These cells migrate down into the layer of heart tissue where muscles reside and transform into stem-like cells, which can then turn into several heart cells types, including cardiomyocytes.
This process has largely been studied in animals and there’s some evidence to suggest that it may also occur in adult humans. Unfortunately, if the process does occur in people, it seems to unfold too inefficiently and in too few cells to result in meaningful tissue regeneration after a heart attack, the study authors said in a statement (opens in new tab). By somehow encouraging more epicardial cells to morph into cardiomyocytes, the authors theorize, scientists could help the heart rebuild itself after injury.
The study authors found they could jump-start this process in human cells in a lab dish by exposing them to oxytocin. They also tested 14 other brain-made hormones, but none of the others could coax the cells into the desired stem-like state required to make new cardiomyocytes, according to the statement.
The team then conducted follow-up experiments in zebrafish, a fish in the minnow family known for its impressive ability to regenerate tissues in its body, including the brain, bones and heart. The team found that, within three days of a cardiac injury, the fishes’ brains began pumping out oxytocin like mad, producing up to 20 times more than they had prior to the injury, the team found. The hormone then traveled to the heart, plugged into its receptors and kicked off the process of transforming epicardial cells into new cardiomyocytes.
These experiments provide early hints that oxytocin may play a key role in heart repair after injury, and by boosting its effects, scientists could develop new treatments to improve patients’ recovery after heart attacks and reduce the risk of future heart failure, the authors concluded. These treatments might include drugs that contain oxytocin or other molecules that can plug into the hormone’s receptors.
“Next, we need to look at oxytocin in humans after cardiac injury,” senior author Aitor Aguirre, an assistant professor in the Michigan State University Department of Biomedical Engineering, said in the statement. “Overall, pre-clinical trials in animals and clinical trials in humans are necessary to move forward.”