I have been noticing that many of the compounds that can be helpful to treat the symptoms of arthritis, osteoarthritis can be used to boost height slightly. The added thickness of the articular cartilage covering around the joints is form the increased lubrication these compounds can produce.

Something that I did find from scouring through old PubMed articles looking at the various kinds of arthritis treatment was a compound called Tocilizumab, which seems to be able to inhibit the inflammatory effects of interleukin-6.

Study #1: Inhibiting interleukin-6 in rheumatoid arthritis

Abstract – Interleukin (IL)-6 is the most abundant proinflammatory cytokine in the circulation and synovial joints of patients with active rheumatoid arthritis. It has pivotal roles in the immune response and inflammation. In rheumatoid arthritis, it causes synovitis, joint destruction, and many systemic manifestations. Clinical trials of tocilizumab, a humanized anti-IL-6 receptor monoclonal antibody that blocks IL-6 signaling, have demonstrated therapeutic benefit. It heralds a new era of anticytokine therapy in rheumatoid arthritis.

I was doing research for another project I was working when I somehow found myself reading up on what can be considered one of the world’s best companies to work for and the 1st real biotech company in the world, Genentech.

Genentech has been consistently ranked as among the best companies to work for in the world by Fortune magazine for over 15 years. In 2006 it was rated #1.

I would also like to present the Awards and recognitions section from the Wikipedia article on Genentech.

Currently the company of Genentech owns the website www.gene.com (very cute and clever).

From the wikipedia article on Genentech…

It states that Genentech was created in 1976 by a VC Robert A. Swanson and a biochemist Dr. Herbert Boyer.  The Swiss health-care conglomerate Roche AG owns Genentech after a massive buyout a few years ago.

Under the research section…

Genentech scientists in these various areas of expertise currently focus their efforts on five disease categories:

1. Oncology
   
2. Immunology
   
3. Tissue Growth and Repair
4. Neuroscience
5. Infectious Disease.

If we go to the product pipiline section, we can see that the 2nd product to ever come out, in 1985 by of Genentech was human recombinant human growth hormone (rhHGH)

• 1985 – Protropin (somatrem) – Supplementary growth hormone for children with growth hormone deficiency (ceased manufacturing 2004).

From the source Money.CNN.com it would seem that the first product, Insulin, was introduced very early on…“Within two years Genentech had concocted human insulin, which in 1982 became the first biotech drug to go to market….”

The fact is that when children suffer from the disorder of being deficient in growth hormone, they develop extreme short stature and stunted growth. The way that most endocrinologists would suggest to not allow that to happen is to start the child on growth hormone therapy will will be where the kid gets a injection of growth hormones a few times each week for many years (usually until they are close to bone maturity)

However, it seems that from a article posted on the Genentech website it suggests that the product protropin was actually the first one that really got down the pipeline. From the article “25th Anniversary of First Product Approval”  which was an article written in Oct. 28, 2010…

“Twenty-five years ago, on October 18, 1985, Genentech received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market its first product, a growth hormone for children with growth hormone deficiency. It was the first recombinant biotech drug to be manufactured and marketed by a biotechnology company…”

It would turn out that for one of the founders of Genentech, he found out that his son was growing too slow which was caused from growth hormone deficiency. His son was going to end up short! and that was when Dr. Herbert W. Boyer decided to take action….

From the Genentech webpage…

“I got an idea for [the commercialization of recombinant DNA technology] when my oldest son was tested for growth hormone. He was on the lower end of the growth curve, and the pediatrician wanted to test his growth hormone levels…It turned out he had normal levels of growth hormone. The pediatrician said that he felt he would grow to an acceptable size based on that, and even though he was in a lower percentile, it was nothing to get too worried about. I didn’t even know that kids were treated with growth hormone to treat dwarfism. I think at the time I may have even told my wife, ‘You know, we could make human growth hormone; all we have to do is isolate the gene.’”   — Herbert W. Boyer, Ph.D., Co-Founder of Genentech

“….considering Genentech’s manufacturing plant was new and Protopin growth hormone was the first commercial product to come out of the facility…. Genentech’s Hallelujah Chorus heralded the FDA approval of Protropin growth hormone.  In an atmosphere of great celebration, Genentech entered a new era as a biotechnology company marketing its own product.

Genentech’s Protropin® (somatrem for injection), the first product to be manufactured and marketed by a biotech company,…”

For me this just shows us just how significant the element of height is in our lives. The fact seems to be that it was Protropin, not Insulin which was the first real product created by what some people would call the first and still one of the biggest and best biotech companies in the world, Genentech.

Protropin, a somatropin was developed because the founder realized that his son was going to end up short, and that was when he decided to search for something. It just shows us that when something like short stature means that people we really care about will have a very hard and difficult life, we finally start to take action.

Interesting Fact: I would also like to point out that from the product pipeline, it seems that the 5th product to ever come out of Genetech was ALSO a growth hormone, most likely used to treat short stature. Nutropin would become the successor to protropin.

• 1993 – Nutropin (recombinant somatropin) – Growth hormone for children and adults for treatment before kidney transplant due to chronic renal insufficiency.

Analysis: The thing about chronic renal insufficiency is that it is one of the most common causes for children to develop into short stature. Refer to the PubMed studies below…

1. Short stature and chronic renal failure: what concerns children and parents?
2. Growth hormone for children with chronic renal failure.

So could it be that Genentech, who has been consistently ranked the BEST IN THE WORLD as a company was created all because of the fact that a son was going to end up short and the father wanted to try to do something to prevent that from happening???

The italian physicist Ettore Majorana is someone who I have always admired and been fascinated by ever since I learned how much the great Enrico Fermi respected his physics abilities and his strange disappearance.

I recently read a paper on a theory on what happened to Majorana where it is claimed that he faked his own death or disappearance and found a way to escape to South America, presumably Peru or Venezuela. While this type of stuff would be interesting only to physics historians, I do have to say that the way Ettore Majorana was able to do original, deep, and insightful research is what I most admire in him.

There is no doubt that this man was extreme intelligent, so much so that Fermi would often lament the fact that Majorana was not there to help in finding solutions to challenging physics problems.

What I am proposing is that after maybe the next 2-3 months, when the majority of the easy papers and posts are finally written up, which will be done soon, it will be time to start synthesizing all the research together from all the posts written in this past year to try to dig for something that researchers may not have seen before.

We will no longer be writing articles which can be duplicated by any ordinary height increase researcher or journalist. I have seen dozens of researchers who can claim that letrozole is the answer to all of their height needs. Well letrozole is rather easy to identify as an important part of our grow taller endeavor since it is clearly written for us to find and read. We need to do more and connect studies and experimental conclusions together to reach new insights and ideas.

We have to go deeper and deeper into the science. There is no other way. It is not possible to stay on the shallow end of understanding and keep on writing about abstracts we find from PubMed. To make any serious breakthrough we need to really sit down and put thing together.

• Currently I am looking over the ideas of possibly weakening the cortical bone layers using reverse ossification ideas making the bones eventually elastic enough to stretch will significantly less force applied. 

• The other idea I have been looking for is ways to cause bone fractures, specifically sharp thin cuts on the bone which can be done non-invasively, maybe through a multiple direction low intensity guided laser apparatus, like that of the MRI-guided focused ultrasound (MRIGFU). I wrote about the possibility of using MRIGFU towards height increase in the post “Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Magnetic Resonance Image, MRI Guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound Surgery, FUS“

• The last thing I have been looking at is finding the best growth factor combination needed to cause adult human adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stem cells to differentiate only into chondrocytes.  

– Just a side thought for today. –

Subperiosteal Transmission Of Intra-Articular Pressure Between Articulated And Stationary Joints

“Hydrostatic pressures can be transmitted between synovial capsules. In each of ten rabbits, we simultaneously measured pressure in two joints, one of which was passively ranged, and the other of which was kept stationary. The intra-articular pressure inside the stationary joint changed every time its companion joint was ranged. But the pressure in the stationary joint did not change when the periosteum was transected above the ranged joint. This phenomenon was observed in all four animals that served as their own controls. The study suggests that the intra-articular pressure was transmitted through the space between the periosteum and the bone surface. Alternative explanations, like measurements of venous blood pressure, did not show correlation with hydrostatic pressure changes in the joints. The Floating Skeleton concept suggests a biomechanical rationale for this newly observed phenomenon: that there exists a subperiosteal hydrostatic connection of synovial joints, and that this “net” distributes excess pressures among joints through the periosteal sheath to sustain the integrity of the joint contacting surfaces over a lifetime.”

“correlation between synovial fluid pressure and the pressure in the blood capillary in the synovium”

“intra-articular pressure was transmitted hydrostatically through the subperiosteal space.”

“The subperiosteal fluid can be found in the cambial layer of the periosteum”

So essentially hydrostatic periosteum between the inner bone, the articular cartilage, and the periosteum are connected.

I was looking through PubMed today and came across a little interesting article/study which looked at the socio-economic patterns of height. The abstract was the only thing that I could get but it did reveal something a little interesting. It was just a short segment but I do wonder what the implications of something like this would be.

PubMed study: “Taller – Healthier – more equal? The biological standard of living in Switzerland in the second half of the 20th century.”

Abstract

This paper analyzes the trends in physical stature and body mass of the Swiss population born between 1955 and 1985, based on data collected in the “Living in Switzerland Survey” (Swiss Household Panel) of 2004. Aside from the time trend, we investigate the impact of educational and marital status as well as spatial effects on height and BMI. The results corroborate previous studies: average height increased during the second half of the 20th century for both women and men, better educated individuals are tallest, divorced men are shorter than married men and urban populations enjoy a height advantage over rural ones. We also compare the level and the trend in height to other postindustrial populations to identify key causes of physical growth and conclude that the quality of the health care systems and equal access to it seem to have a greater impact than other redistributive aspects of the welfare state. The relatively low level of inequality in health led to average height in Switzerland that are similar to those obtained in the Scandinavian social-democratic welfare states. Other measures such as income inequality do not have a high explanatory power for the average stature of the Swiss population.

Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

PMID:19797002 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Analysis

Maybe more than just showing the relationship of how divorced men are shorter than their married counterpart, there was a few other things that this 30 year study between the years 1955-1985 of Switzerland revealed. These are the main things…

1. better educated individuals are tallest
2. urban populations enjoy a height advantage over rural ones
3. the quality of the health care systems and equal access to it seem to have a greater impact than other redistributive aspects of the welfare state
4. The relatively low level of inequality in health led to average height in Switzerland that are similar to those obtained in the Scandinavian social-democratic welfare states

So if you live in the city, you are a little taller than if you lived on a farm. If you are in the tallest group, you are more likely to be well educated.

Healthcare plays a huge part. Because of how equal it is in getting healthcare for everyone, the entire average height of switzerland has reached the level of height seen in the Northern Scandinavian countries.