Experience comes with age. With experience comes sore backs, tired bones, and increased risks from a large number of diseases.
Scientists have been trying to figure out how to stop the pains in old age and make us live longer and healthier.
A new study that looked at the long-term viability of cells in mice appears to have produced some very intriguing results.
The technique can be used across the life span to slow down aging in animals.
The team found that the tissues of the mice were rejuvenated, meaning that the genes that cause inflammation, cell death, and stress were lowered in the treated animals. The skin was able to grow more and scar less than it usually does in older age.
The epigenetic clock, a measure of the patterns of DNA methylation levels attributed to aging, seemed to be wound back.
In addition to tackling age-related diseases, this approach may provide the biomedical community with a new tool to restore tissue and organismal health by improving cell function and resilience in different disease situations.
The treatment appears to be safe and effective in the long term, and could one day help humans stave off some diseases, as this research has only been conducted in mice thus far.
In the study, the researchers used four well-known proteins that regulate the expression of DNA.
The technique can be used to turn adult cells back into stem cells, but it can also be used to reprogram the cells into a more youthful state.
If the same thing were done to the cells in an animal's body, it could make it seem younger.
When the Yamanaka factors were applied longer term, the researchers wanted to look at what would happen to the mice.
The factors were used in three different ways in the new research. A group was treated with factors for a month when they were 25 months old.
The second and third groups had long-term treatments. One received regular doses from 15 to 22 months and the other from 12 to 22 months.
The mice that were treated for one month did not show any of the age-reversing qualities, but the two longer treatment groups showed signs of rejuvenation without any increased risk of cancer or other health problems.
Overall, this study provides provocative hints that long-term partial reprogramming holds promise as an intervention that might restore and replenish some tissues.
It is notable that partial reprogrammability successfully elicits systemic transcriptomic, metabolomic, andlipidomic changes, and alters the epigenetic clock, and that observing these results in a normally aging mouse model provides further evidence that this approach may be beneficial beyond disease states.
The method is still an exciting development in anti-aging science, and one that might help ease the pain and damage of getting old one day.
Nature Aging has published the research.
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