From Caribbean360

While human therapies are likely to be a distant prospect, the Harvard Medical School research team wants to start clinical trials in 2015. (Credit: ageing-no-more.com)

CONNECTICUT, United States, Thursday January 2, 2014 – In what has been referred to as an “exciting finding” by other scientists, American researchers have performed a significant reversal of the ageing process in animal studies.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School identified an entirely new mechanism of ageing and then reversed it, according to an account of the study published in the journal Cell.

Using a chemical to rejuvenate muscle in mice, the scientists produced a result which they described as the equivalent of transforming a 60-year-old person’s muscle to that of a 20-year-old. Actual muscle strength failed to improve, however.

The study focused on a chemical called NAD, levels of which naturally fall in all cells of the body with age.

The Harvard research team demonstrated that this drop disrupted the function of the cell’s mitochondria, leading to lower energy production and ageing.

Their experiments showed that boosting NAD levels in mice by introducing a chemical which they naturally converted into NAD, produced a fountain of youth-like effect.

Just one week of administering the youth-drug in two-year-old mice transformed their muscles to those akin to a six-month-old in terms of mitochondrial function, muscle wastage, insulin resistance and inflammation.

“We believe this is quite an important finding,” said Dr Ana Gomes of the department of genetics at Harvard Medical School, adding that muscle strength may return with a longer course of treatment.

This would not act as an overall “cure” for ageing, however, with other aspects such as shortening of telomeres or damage to DNA remaining unaffected by the new procedure.

While human therapies are likely to be a distant prospect, the research group wants to start clinical trials in 2015.

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