American researchers have managed to reduce the biological age of nine people by administering them a synthetic growth hormone (hrGH) for 12 months.
- Researchers are pushing back the biological age of several people
- Their mortality risk decreased
- A new test is planned on a larger sample
Many researches are carried out in the world to rejuvenate the cells of the organism or to slow down the aging process. One of them, published in the journal Aging Cell, suggests that a person’s biological clock could be set back by a year and a half. A feat in the race against time.
New healthy men, ages 51 to 65, took synthetic growth hormone (hrGH) to stimulate the thymus, a small gland located in the upper chest, between the lungs. The thymus plays an important role in the immune system, but atrophies with age, thus losing its effectiveness.
Decreased mortality risk
Thanks to blood samples taken before and after the experiment, researchers at the University of California (USA) discovered that the epigenetic age of the participants had dropped by a year and a half in 12 months of treatment. Epigenetics is the study of changes in the activity of genes: it allows here to measure the biological age of a person, that is to say the level of aging of his cells, rather than his chronological age. .
“This strongly suggests that their mortality risk has decreased, without being able to give a precise estimate of the increase in their lifespan”, comments Steve Horvath, professor of biostatistics and lead author of the study. Nevertheless, this research, which was only conducted on white men belonging to a single age group, must be conducted on a larger sample including people of different ages, ethnicities and genders. A new trial is planned on 50 participants.
Rejuvenation of human cells
Recently, researchers from Stanford University (EUnited States) succeeded in rejuvenating human cells thanks to proteins involved in the beginnings of embryonic development and induced pluripotent stem cells, more simply called iPS (for “induced pluripotent stem cells”).
“When iPS cells are made from adult cells, they become both younger and pluripotentexplains Vittorio Sebastiano, assistant professor at Stanford University. We wondered for a while if it might be possible to just turn the aging clock back without inducing pluripotency.”, that is, the ability to multiply. And it’s done, argued the researchers who managed to rejuvenate the cells of several people aged one and a half to three and a half years.
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