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Rats give pointer to elixir of youth
A troupe of
elderly dancing rats has opened up the prospect of rejuvenating ageing
humans, scientists revealed yesterday. Although
dietary supplements sold in health food shops might not do much yet for
humans, they put old rodents back on the road again. Bruce Ames, a cell
biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, reports in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today that he fed elderly
rats two chemicals, acetyl-L-carintine and the anti-oxidant alpha-lipoic
acid. Both are normally found in mammal cells, and both are sold in US
health shops. Then he tested the animals for memory and stamina. "With
these two supplements together, these old rats got up and did the macarena,"
he said. "The brain looks better, they are full of energy: everything
we looked at looks more like a young animal." His colleague
Tony Hagen, of Oregon State University, said: "We also see a reversal
in loss of memory. This is a dual track improvement that is significant
and unique. This is really starting to explode and move out of the realm
of basic research into people." The
University of California has patented the combination. The two scientists
have formed a company, Juvenon, to license the patent from the university.
They do not claim to have found an elixir of youth. But the hope is that
there might be ways of delaying the onset of age related problems. Dr Ames and
his colleague think that the combination "tunes up" the tiny
power packs in the cells known as mitochondria. They had been intrigued by
research in 1999 that showed that old rats responded to one of the
compounds. They eventually tried a combination approach to simultaneously
restore activity and combat the stresses of chemical damage to cells. They fed both
very young and old rats one compound in their water, the other in their
food. After one month, the older rats had responded. "We significantly reversed the decline in overall activity typical of aged rats to what you see in a middle aged to young adult rat seven to 10 months of age," Dr Hagen said. "This is the equivalent of making a 75- to 80-year-old person act middle aged. We have only shown short term effects but the results give us the rationale for looking at these things long term."
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