IGF - Tendon Strengthening

[ERGO]

Hi All,

Statement below get's banded around in few places in differnt forms:

"IGF will increase tendon/ligament strength as well as muscle size".

Can any one link a study (or abstract even) showing this (in any animal?!)

If no studies exist can one of the more bio-chemistry advanced explain the hypothesis/theory of action behind.

And if no joy on the above, anecdotally has anyone any firsthand experience.

Lastly if any positive from any of the avenues above - how would it be administered for this purpose, locally (in tendon), locally (surrounding muscle) or Sub-Q?

Reason behind, Is that I have had bi-lateral surgery. All good to go and physio'd up, but feel there is some underlying weakness there (manefesting in lack of strength through the tendons operated on and making recovery after exersice extreamly sore for many days).

Cheers

ERGO

[Ziricote]

It causes hypertrophy and hyperplasia so it's plausible that it can aid in the repair of joint tissues.

LR3-IGF-1 is systematic so you wouldn't have to pin directly into the joint but it would be a good idea to pin close to it at least I suspect.

The roles of growth factors in tendon and ligament healing.
Temporal expression of growth factors and matrix molecules in healing tendon lesions.

There's probably a lot more out there if you're willing to search and/or pay for studies.

[ERGO]

Cheers Z.

Both good reads. Obvioulsy these (and most other studies) are concentrating on endegonous (Sp?) IGF, but the quote below gives me hope.

"Studies into the effects of the exogenous application of TGFbeta, IGF-I, PDGF and bFGF into the wound site singly and in combination have shown promise, significantly decreasing a number of parameters used to define the functional deficit of a healing tendon. Application of IGF-I has been shown to increase in the Achilles Functional Index and the breaking energy of injured rat tendon"

So that is pretty much what I was looking for (don't suppose anyone has access to this study/studies do they -as you can see I'm very against paying for them).

Anyone got any anecdotal experience on tendon injuries while on the IGF?

Take care

ERGO

[ERGO]

Another thing...

Hope you are right with localised but not targetted injections - your reasoning makes sense.

This seems to suggest otherwise:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=12382953

at very low dosages.

But injecting the tendon myself would be very difficult, painful and would most likley lead to me rupturing them if I put too much in, or over did it.

Cheers,

ERGO