GDF11 and cardiac hypertrophy: However, the findings of subsequent studies have called into question the true impact of GDF11 on cardiac hypertrophy (Egerman et al. 2015; Rodgers and Eldridge 2015; Smith et al. 2015; Rodgers 2016; Schafer et al. 2016), introducing the possibility that GDF11 has a pro-hypertrophic effect, or even no effect at all.