Forums: Hormone Replacement Therapy (menopause)

BEIJING: China's health ministry said on Tuesday it had ordered food safety authorities in central Hubei province to investigate claims that milk powder has caused infant girls to grow breasts. Officials had already begun tests on the baby formula after parents and doctors expressed fears that hormones in the milk powder made by NASDAQ-listed Synutra had caused babies to develop breasts prematurely. "The Ministry of Health had attached great importance to this issue," spokesman Deng Haihua told a news conference, according to a transcript. Local food safety authorities had earlier refused a parent's request to investigate the formula made by...

(IsraelNN.com) A researcher at the University of Haifa has discovered that the hormone oxytocin, also known as the "love hormone," can trigger negative emotions such as jealousy as well. Oxytocin is released naturally in the body during childbirth, lactation and when engaging in intimate relations. Participants in a previous experiment who inhaled a synthetic form of the hormone displayed higher levels of altruistic feelings. However, it was also discovered in earlier studies on rodents that the hormone may be linked to higher levels of aggression as well.

Research at the universities of Liverpool and Oxford into the finger length of primate species has revealed that cooperative behavior is linked to exposure to hormone levels in the womb. The hormones, called androgens, are important in the development of masculine characteristics such as aggression and strength. It is also thought that prenatal androgens affect finger length during development in the womb. High levels of androgens, such as testosterone, increase the length of the fourth finger in comparison to the second finger. Scientists used finger ratios as an indicator of the levels of exposure to the hormone and compared this...

The American Medical Association is taking on a segment of the $50 billion "anti-aging" industry that promotes the use of hormones as a treatment for consumers to slow or reverse the aging process. In a report presented Sunday in Chicago to a committee of the AMA's 543-member policymaking House of Delegates, the AMA Council on Science and Public Health calls into question claims made by for-profit Web sites, anti-aging clinics and other businesses promoting hormones as anti-aging treatments. "Despite the widespread promotion of hormones as anti-aging agents by for-profit Web sites, anti-aging clinics and compounding pharmacies, the scientific evidence to...