Experimental treatment of aging improvement

It is possible that someday older people will have the opportunity to apply a new therapy of American scientists to return to adolescence.

Ronald DePinho, a Harvard University researcher in the US, and colleagues say reducing the length of telomeres at the end of the chromosome is one of the ways to slow down the aging process, the Guardian reported. .

Telomeres are microscopic structures that play a key role in biological aging. They are located at the end of the chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, the length of the telomeres will decrease a bit. Finally, when short telomeres reach a certain level, the cell will die. Elizabeth Blackburn, a cell biologist with US citizenship and Australia's Nobel Prize in Medicine, likens telomeres to the ends of shoelaces. When the tip of the shoe breaks or splashes, the shoelaces start to fray. In most cells, telomere length decreases with the body's age.

Harvard University team hopes their technique will
help improve the quality of life for the family in the future.

The DePinho team applies genetic engineering to produce mice without telomerase, an enzyme that blocks telomere lengthening after each cell division. Because there is no telomerase, the aging process of mice takes many times faster than normal. Smell, brain size, and reproductive ability of rats dropped sharply. In addition, their intestines and spleen are also damaged. But when DePinho injects a solution into mice to activate telomerase, damaged tissues recover very quickly and the aging process reverses.

"The health of rats has dropped to extremely bad levels, but in just a few months their bodies have revived vigorously. Even we see new neurons appear in their brains , " DePinho said. expression.

Initially the team only hoped their therapy would slow down the aging process, but the results showed that the aging process was reversed. According to the research team, their accomplishments help scientists move closer to the goal of reversing or slowing the aging process on the human body. An effective anti-aging solution will significantly improve people's health, improve the quality of life of the elderly, reduce the cost of treating a range of aging-related diseases - such as memory loss, stroke stroke and cardiovascular disease.