Before starting the study, both the drug group and the placebo group had the same muscle energy recovery ability, so any later differences weren’t due to starting out differently.

The muscle energy improvement wasn’t because people lost weight or got more active — it seemed to be linked directly to IGF-I levels instead.

We know muscle energy recovery got better, but we don’t know if it’s because there are more mitochondria, bigger ones, or just ones that work better.

Because so few people finished the study and the muscle energy didn’t improve much more in the drug group than the placebo group, we can’t say for sure the drug caused the improvement.

Even though the drug raised IGF-I levels, it didn’t make the muscle energy recovery noticeably better than the placebo — so the effect might be subtle or only show up in certain people.

Even when researchers removed blurry or low-quality scans, the link between IGF-I and muscle energy recovery stayed strong — so the finding is reliable.