Humans have long pursued the fountain of youth and with the wide-ranging benefits of reducing
disease and enabling a longer, healthier life, reversing the causes of aging is a major focus
of much medical research. Normally, the process of aging in the human body starts at middle
age around 45. The process and its effects depend on both, the genetic as well as environmental
factors. Aging causes some amount of reduction in the rate of human cell multiplication and
also causes some of the cells to function inappropriately
Ageing is considered a one-way street, but researchers at Harvard University have shown
that some aspects can be reversed. Researchers say that they've been able to
reverse the aging process in mice, using a chemical that in one week made two-year-old
mice tissue resemble tissue of six-month-old mice. In human years, that's as if a 60-year-old's
cells became more like the cells of a 20-year-old. The researchers have managed to reverse the
effects of aging in mice using an approach that restores communication between a cell's
mitochondria and nucleus. Mitochondria are the power supply within the cell, generating
the chemical energy required for key biological functions. When communication breaks down
between mitochondria and the nucleus, which is the cell's control center, the effects
of aging accelerate. The study found that by restoring this molecular
communication, aging could not only be slowed, but could be reversed.
Responsible for this communication breakdown is a decline of the chemical NAD. This chemical
reduces in the body as we age. By increasing amounts of a compound used by the cell to
produce NAD, the researchers found that they could quickly repair mitochondrial function.
And that led to the radical reversal in the ageing of the mice. They had more energy,
their muscles were as though they'd be exercising and it was able to mimic the benefits of diet
and exercise just within a week. Researchers say that the diseases they have come to expect
of old age have been drastically reversed in mice. Even the younger mice showed benefits
from the compound, making them "supercharged" above normal.
The researchers say a "magic pill" that reverses ageing is several years away, partially due
to the cost of the compound, which would be about $50,000 a day for a human.
Reversing aging isn't just to make people live until they are 200 or 300, the goal is
to keep people healthier for longer and keep them from getting diseases of aging.
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