NEW YORK, Jul 13 (Reuters Health) - A group of experts on aging has issued a report questioning the validity and safety of "anti-aging medicine."

"There are no valid intrinsic measures of aging," Dr. Robert N. Butler, head of the International Longevity Center-USA (ILC-USA), said at a press briefing here. "Claims that you hear of slowing or reversing aging cannot be proven."

Butler served as the first director of the National Institute on Aging, and is a professor of geriatrics and adult development at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

The ILC-USA sponsored a workshop on "Biomarkers of Aging: From Primitive Organisms to Man" and released a report based on its conclusions Thursday. The workshop was one of a series on aging issues, held by the ILC-USA twice a year, modeled on the National Institutes of Health's consensus conferences. The ILC-USA is a nonprofit, New York-based research, policy and education organization.

According to ILC-USA, the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine states that about 2,500 US doctors have established specialty practices in anti-aging medicine and claims that "immortality is within our grasp."

But Butler and his colleagues counter that such claims are great exaggerations, and that neither the academy nor the specialty of anti-aging medicine are recognized by mainstream groups, including the American Medical Association.

Some doctors in the US, France and Great Britain are offering a series of lab tests that promise to measure a person's "actual"--rather than chronological--age, Butler said. They use these tests--which cost up to $2,000 and are not covered by insurance--as a basis to prescribe an anti-aging regimen of antioxidants or hormone replacement.

Butler noted that a year's supply of human growth hormone costs $15,000 to $18,000, yet there is no scientific evidence that this or other hormone replacement therapies will extend life, and they may in fact be harmful. "It's certainly a very fine way to make a living, unfortunately," he said.

Because levels of some hormones decline with age, claims have been made that restoring these levels can reverse aging. But this concept has no scientific support, Butler said, and giving people supplements of hormones can actually be harmful.

"At the animal level, human growth hormone has been found to shorten life," he noted. "There may be an appropriate normal physiological reason why the hormone declines with age."

Butler and his colleague Dr. Howard Fillit, who heads the New York-based Institute for the Study of Aging, also assailed claims that antioxidants have anti-aging properties. "Antioxidants have never been proven to be of any clinical benefit for any illness, ever," Fillit said.

More research is needed to help identify biomarkers of aging, the report concludes. Once identified, these markers could be used to measure the effectiveness of purported anti-aging therapies.

But identifying these markers, Fillit and Butler noted, will require following a large group of people for at least 15 years. And there is no funding currently available for such research, according to Butler, who pointed out that the National Institutes of Health sets aside only about $200 million for research into the aging process.

Butler and his colleagues also urge the US government to find a way to test claims by various supplement manufacturers that their products can fight the effects of aging. Butler suggested that the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine could conduct clinical trials of these dietary supplements. Currently, the Food and Drug Administration is virtually powerless to regulate claims made by supplement manufacturers.

Fillit and Butler and their colleagues do point to some research areas that promise to help scientists understand the aging process. For example, calorie restriction was originally shown in 1935 to extend the lives of rodents, and studies in monkeys are currently under way. And the study of telomeres--the structures at the end of chromosomes that limit the number of times a cell can divide--could unlock some secrets of aging.

Fillit also argued that the anti-aging movement "medicalizes" the aging process, treating it as a bad thing. "It sends the wrong message to our doctors and to our people," he said.

So how can we extend our lives? The prescription Fillit and Butler offer is simple and cheap: Use alcohol moderately, do not smoke, exercise and watch calorie intake.

They add that people with age-associated conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes can ward off life-threatening events such as heart attack and stroke by using lifestyle changes and medications to control their illness

From ReutersHealth.com