Hope springs eternal.
The Washington Times reports that scientists were able to reverse the graying of hair on mice and smooth the wrinkles of the same critter. And with this result, it is advanced that the treatment will work on humans. Maybe. Good luck bringing this to market.
Science has made mice look good by reversing age-related wrinkles and hair loss at the genetic level. Humanity could get a similar make-over in the future.They introduced a specific gene mutation on a test mouse, which prompted a change in profound appearance. Within four weeks, the mouse had developed wrinkled skin and extensive, visible hair loss. When regular function was restored within the gene by turning off the culprit mutation, the mouse returned to a previous life of smooth skin and luxurious fur only two months later — deemed “indistinguishable” from a healthy mouse of the same age.
“To our knowledge, this observation is unprecedented,” said Keshav Singh, a professor of genetics who led the study.
“This mouse model should provide an unprecedented opportunity for the development of preventive and therapeutic drug development strategies to augment the mitochondrial functions for the treatment of aging-associated skin and hair pathology and other human diseases in which mitochondrial dysfunction plays a significant role,” Mr. Singh said in a statement.“
Oh, I see. So what we've learned, then, is that to reverse aging one needs to repair the mitochondrial function. But we already have that capability. And for a little pushback on the study cited above, let it be known that the most important concern when it comes to reversing aging is not gene mutation, as was conducted in the experiment, but "rather the dynamic ability of genes to make proteins."Wrinkled skin and hair loss are hallmarks of aging. What if they could be reversed?” asked researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham — who appear to have accomplished that feat, according to the research team.
While gene mutations only account for ~2% of all disease, most chronic age-related disease doesn’t involve faults in gene structure but rather the dynamic ability of genes to make proteins (called gene expression or gene silencing) which is referred to as epigenetics.Sardi adds that
. . . inherited gene mutations may be inevitable and produce single-gene disorders such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell, muscular dystrophy or Huntington’s disease. But aging and its accompanying diseases (diabetes, arthritis, cancer, heart, brain and liver disease) are modifiable.I'll add two more points by Sardi on an anti-aging compound.
The diet, namely a calorie-restricted diet, practiced daily or intermittently, doubles the lifespan and healthspan [my emphasis] of lower forms of life (fruit flies, roundworms, and mice). Or a molecular mimic (i.e. anti-aging pill) may target the same genes as food deprivation and provide a shortcut to allay the ravages of aging.
. . .
In other words, what would taken a lifetime to achieve in a laboratory mouse was exceeded by 9-fold in just 12 weeks. Eighty-two percent (82%) of the same 832 longevity genes were switched in the same direction (on or off) as a limited calorie diet by the resveratrol matrix (Longevinex®), which is a commercially available nutraceutical. That is the closest anyone has come to a molecular mimic of a calorie-restricted diet.But get Sardi's Longevinex. It's one of the few Resveratrol products that's actually been tested.
