Where it comes from
- Made in
- Spleen, brain, muscle and many tissues; the embryo above all
- Sent out by
- Circulates bound to its propeptide; levels in blood are hard to measure apart from myostatin
- Acts on
- Developing spine and kidney
- Muscle and heart
- Blood vessels in the brain
What it does
- Sets the pattern of the vertebrae and the kidney before birth
- Reported in 2013 and 2014 to reverse heart thickening, muscle ageing and brain-vessel ageing when young blood or GDF11 was given to old mice 1
- Others could not reproduce it, found the assay had been measuring myostatin, and found GDF11 wasting muscle instead 2
In medicine
- None. Blood GDF11 is a research marker whose assays disagree, because the antibodies cannot reliably tell it from myostatin 2
- No GDF11 preparation has reached a human trial, for ageing or for anything else
Beyond the body’s own use
- Young plasma and GDF11 have been promoted as anti-ageing treatments. The FDA warned in 2019 that infusions of young-donor plasma for ageing, memory, Parkinson’s disease or heart disease have no proven benefit and carry the ordinary risks of a transfusion 3
- The rejuvenation claim did not survive replication: the original assay had been reading myostatin, GDF11 rises rather than falls with age, and giving it to mice held muscle repair back 2
- People obtain GDF11 outside approval as a research peptide. Unapproved and compounded preparations are not reviewed for safety, effectiveness or quality, and no controlled human evidence supports any use
Sources
- Loffredo et al., Growth differentiation factor 11 is a circulating factor that reverses age-related cardiac hypertrophy, Cell 2013
- Egerman et al., GDF11 increases with age and inhibits skeletal muscle regeneration, Cell Metabolism 2015
- FDA statement, Important information about young donor plasma infusions, 2019
This card describes what a medicine is for and what the evidence says; it recommends nothing. Talk to your clinician about anything you read here.