Growth Hormone Reverses Signs of Age : Medicine: Injections changed body composition of elderly men by as much as 20 years. But failing eyesight and hearing loss were not affected.

Robert Bensing doesn’t feel cheated by his brief flirtation with an age-reversing hormone that some fancy may be the doorway to a futuristic Fountain of Youth.

In fact, the 72-year-old retired chemist has found his joints no longer ache constantly with arthritis and his skin is firmer, giving him the appearance and vitality of a man much his junior.

“I feel a little more energetic,” said Bensing, who relishes being called “son” by a friend about his age and now can spend more time gardening.

He stopped taking the hormone more than 1 1/2 years ago, and doctors predicted the age-reversing symptoms of his therapy would fade within a few months.

“Theoretically, I lost all that, but I don’t feel that I did,” Bensing said recently at his rural Waukegan home. “Since the benefits didn’t go away, I don’t feel cheated. It was worth it. If it contributes to the advancement of medical knowledge, we don’t feel cheated.”

For a year, Bensing injected himself three times weekly with the human growth hormone. Within six months of the first treatment, he could unscrew bottle caps with ease, mow the law without tiring easily and sit through lengthy car trips--all of which would have been difficult months earlier.

Tests revealed the hormone treatments helped shrink body fat, restore lean body mass lost through aging and increase the thickness of Bensing’s skin.

“I noticed right off he was doing things much faster,” said Bensing’s wife, Alice, 57. “He was more willing to go places and do things than before.”

The growth hormone taken by Bensing and 19 other older male volunteers is a synthetic version of one produced naturally in humans. As one ages, the natural production of the hormone fades and eventually stops, researchers have learned.

Daniel Rudman, an endocrinologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin in suburban Milwaukee and director of the experiment, said researchers have determined the hormone injections reversed aging in the body composition of elderly men by as much as 20 years.

Rudman and his fellow researchers reported this summer in the New England Journal of Medicine that the hormone increased lean body mass in patients by 9%, decreased fat tissue by 14% and thickened skin by 7%.

It does not, however, affect failing eyesight, hearing loss or degeneration of brain cells. The improvements strictly involved the patient’s body mass.

Rudman, 62, was among a group of physicians in the 1960s who used human growth hormone to treat abnormally short children. He decided to experiment with the hormone on the elderly after watching his parents grow old and frail in a nursing home.

The hormone, once only available by extraction from human corpses, now is produced through genetic engineering. But regular treatment costs $14,000 a year for adults.

Experts warn it is too soon to determine the severity of side effects or whether the hormone could be produced cheaper and more readily.

Most of the men in the experiment have declined to talk publicly since the study was published, some at the advice of the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Bensing, one of the first volunteers for the study, said the hormone lessened the crippling effects of arthritis, prompted a quicker recovery from a cataract operation and appeared to make a crushed spinal disk a bit sturdier.

“There’s a guy my age starting to call me ‘son,’ ” Bensing said. “They said, ‘You look great.’ ”

When he began treatment, Bensing was told the possible side effects included an increase in blood pressure or blood sugar. But his only complaint was a numbness in his wrists, which he attributed to pressure from skin and muscle growth. It stopped once the therapy ceased, he said.

But Bensing, who lost hearing in one ear while an Air Force engineer in World War II, said he was disappointed the hormone didn’t help that.

Mrs. Bensing, who was born with cerebral palsy, said she too would like to one day receive the hormone.

“I’ve had limitations all my life,” she said. “I can see so many benefits for women, osteoporosis and other problems in the aging process.”

Rudman, whose research was carried out at veterans’ hospitals in North Chicago and Milwaukee, said the hormone didn’t appear to significantly improve bone density, reverse brain cell loss, cure failing vision or affect life span.

Its value may lie in helping the chronically ill or older people prepare for or recover from major medical operations or illnesses, he said.

Dr. Axel G. Feller, who helped in the experiments at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in North Chicago, said researchers are not prepared to recommend growth hormones for the aged.

“We don’t have the whole picture,” Feller said.

Results of the experiments on the elderly, which began in 1980 and are continuing, may make therapeutic applications of the hormone available within five years, Rudman said.