Young blood for old: Road to long life?

23 พฤศจิกายน 2559

Immortality & eternal life, a dream for thousands of years, may become more real with new blood filtering technologies.

MEDICINE & SCIENCE

Young blood for old: Road to long life?

Internet giant Google funds research that could help people live longer (life extension) through its company Calico Labs (see here, here, here, here & here).

Recently, blood filtering experiments in mice funded by Calico Labs and other companies conducted at UC Berkeley have shown promise in extending the life span of living things (see here).

A clinical trial on humans of the radical new anti - ageing treatment will soon be launched in California.

The treatment consists of having your blood filtered through a machine to reduce the high levels of proteins associated with ageing and that are believed to possibly contribute to physical deterioration in old age.

MICE STUDIES

After the blood of old mice was injected into young mice, the young mice became weaker with reduced growth of new liver and brain cells.

Then young blood was injected into old mice and it was found to speed up muscle repair.

This could be due to either diluting and reducing the amount of old blood in the bloodstream or perhaps because the young blood has some rejuvenating life-giving properties. Scientists are not sure yet.

IDEA BEHIND THE EXPERIMENTS

The idea is that molecules in blood may change the speed of ageing in different tissues located around the body.

The various tissues of the body manufacture proteins continuously.

As a person grows old, the rate at which these proteins are produced changes with the production of some proteins slowing down while others speed up.

One idea in these new treatments is to regulate the level of different proteins in the blood bringing them back to the levels of youth.

So far, the experiments have produced incredible results, but in mice.

It remains to be seen whether the results will carry over to humans.

If scientists could slow down the ageing process and prevent diseases associated with ageing such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and type 2 diabetes, lives could be extended past the seven decades when the body typically begins falter and start to deteriorate irreversibly leading to eventual death.