Human Growth Hormone (Somatropin)

Recombinant human growth hormone is one of the best-evidenced hormone therapies that exists — decades of trials across multiple real indications, since 1985. But almost none of that evidence applies to the reason most people buying it from grey-market sources want it: to build muscle or reverse aging as a healthy adult. For that use, there's no comparable trial base, and it's a prohibited substance in every major sport.

What it's actually approved for

Recombinant hGH was first approved in 1985 as Protropin (somatrem, Genentech) — the first recombinant pharmaceutical product sold by a biotech company — for severe pediatric growth hormone deficiency, replacing the cadaver-pituitary-derived hormone used before it. Humatrope (somatropin, Eli Lilly) followed in 1987. Today's approved indications across various somatropin brands include pediatric GH deficiency, Turner syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, Noonan syndrome, SHOX deficiency, small-for-gestational-age growth failure, chronic renal insufficiency, adult GH deficiency, and (as Serostim) HIV-associated wasting.

A real, ugly safety chapter worth knowing

Before recombinant hGH, growth hormone was extracted from human cadaver pituitary glands, used to treat roughly 7,700 US patients from the 1960s through the 1980s via the National Hormone and Pituitary Program. That practice caused a real, documented outbreak of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: at least 226 cases worldwide, 29 of them in the US, with reported incubation periods of 5 to 42 years (mean 17 years) — and one case reported with a 48.3-year incubation period. US cases were found only in patients treated before 1977, when a new purification procedure using column chromatography was introduced. This is why recombinant hGH replaced cadaver-derived hormone entirely, and it's relevant context, not a knock against today's recombinant product.

Prader-Willi: a real warning worth knowing

Current somatropin labels carry reports of sudden death in Prader-Willi syndrome patients who were severely obese, had upper-airway obstruction, sleep apnea, or an unidentified respiratory infection at treatment initiation — this is FDA-mandated label language, not an outside critique, and a genuine warning worth knowing rather than marketing caution.

The anti-aging/bodybuilding use

hGH is prohibited at all times under WADA's S2 category (peptide hormones, growth factors and related substances), detectable via an isoform test that distinguishes exogenous 22kDa GH from the body's natural mix of isoforms. We did not find controlled trial evidence supporting muscle-building or anti-aging claims in GH-sufficient healthy adults comparable to the trial base behind its approved indications — that gap, between "real approved hormone" and "what it's sold for online," is the story here.