Mayo Clinic study just published in Nature may hold the key to delaying the chronic ailments and disabilities of aging.
The study, conducted by Dr. James Kirkland and a team of researchers at the Mayo Clinic, looked at what would happen if senescent cells — cells that accumulate in various tissues with aging — were removed in genetically altered mice.
To his surprise, he found that the chronic ailments and disabilities routinely associated with aging — such as muscle weakness, chronic inflammation, lack of fat under the skin and cataracts — were all delayed.
The study looked at mice that had been designed to age in an accelerated fashion — five times faster than regular mice. They had been genetically engineered to have a suicide gene in the senescent cells which was targeted to be turned on by a drug. Then the cells basically blew themselves up.
“If you clear these cells, you can delay age-related changes,” Kirkland, a Canadian, told the Star in a phone interview. “It’s proof of principle. The things we saw were decreased frailty, metabolic rates were better, the mice didn’t lose fat tissue under the skin, didn’t get cataracts. We were able to slow down those age-related changes.”
Wonder if that might also be applicable to the human socio-political realm? Let the purging begin! To read more, click here.