Aging And The Mystery Of "Young Blood"

For centuries, men and women from all corners of the world have searched for the ultimate anti-aging formula, the one that would be both effective and long-lasting in nature. However, finding the proverbial fountain of youth has been fruitless so far. But is this quest really meaningless? Are we really programmed to age and die? Maybe something can be done to change this genetic program, if it exists?

Increasing burden of aging

With aging, functional decline becomes evident in cognitive, locomotor, social, psychological and physical domains.

Learning becomes an increasingly difficult task, we have less control over our movements and behavioral changes become more frequent. Together, these features of decline are also related to the development of neurodegenerative disorders, such as mild cognitive impairment , Alzheimer’s disease , or AD-related dementia. The compromised functionality reduces the quality of life and causes great concerns in the geriatric community.

Thanks to the progress of medicine, we now live longer. However, longer life does not necessarily mean a quality life in terms of physical health. And as the world’s aging population is increasing, so are the above-mentioned concerns. Researching and testing new methods of increasing cognitive ability, while at the same time reducing the natural effects of aging is of the utmost public interest.

Our aging seems to be genetically programmed indeed

The biological and cellular pathways underlying the normal aging processes are diverse. Researchers have, for a long time, tried to take advantage of the mechanisms behind those processes to devise a strategy to control the rate of cognitive and physical decline in otherwise healthy elders.

Aging does seem to be programmed in our genes. Certain genes turn on or off at certain age directing the process of age-related changes. So far our ability to control this process was extremely limited. We really need to understand the molecular details of aging regulation to be able to interfere.

Anecdotal evidences suggest that programmed aging is not something completely universal in nature.

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Some species, like Greenland whale, don’t show any signs of age-related physical deterioration even at very advanced age of 100 years and above. Ones we know what exactly is behind these phenomena, we might be able to modify our own genes and prevent aging of human body. At the moment this still seems to be a remote prospective, but other interesting recent discoveries offer the clue on other ways of fighting the age-related decline.

Young Blood Phenomenon – Possible Key To New Treatments?

A rather curious theory has recently been tested by a joint collaboration of researchers from several universities and medical schools across the United States. The general aim of these investigators was to assess if there was anything in the blood of young mice that could prevent or delay molecular, physiological and behavioral aspects of age-related decline in aged mice. These researchers had, in a previous study, identified an increased number of stem cells in the brain of old mice following the injections of young blood. Therefore, the new study, which was published back in May 2014, was building upon the discoveries of the former.

So, the above hypothesis was tested using a technique that has been used in scientific studies with animals for at least 150 years: parabiosis.

In this particular case, where animals of different ages were paired, we say the technique that was used was heterochronic parabiosis. This strategy has been employed several times, precisely because it provides with an experimental system to assess the effects of a tested procedure or treatment on cell and tissue aging, to study age-related diseases and other age-related parameters.

In this particular case, two groups of animals were studied: one group of young and aged mice surgically joined, so that they shared the same circulatory system; and a group of aged mice which received injections of blood from younger mice into their tails.

After an exposure of five weeks to young blood, aged mice were found to fight back the effects of aging at the molecular, structural, functional and cognitive levels in the aged hippocampus. The hippocampus is a part of the brain that has been noted to be the most sensitive to aging, both in men and in animals. Furthermore, this area is highly involved in learning and memory formation and, as such, proves to be one of the most important parts of the brain to study in this type of examinations.

The findings might have far-reaching consequences for developing anti-aging therapeutics

Specific findings in the hippocampus of aged mice exposed to young blood include an increase in the number of neuronal structures that receive signals to transmit information between neurons, an enhancement of long-term potentiation (a type of neuronal transmission that has been implicated in the retention of information) and a rise in the concentration of specific molecules that participate in the learning processes within the brain.

The observed improvements were not limited by the brain structures only. 

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Despite these promising results, investigators are still trying to identify the components within the young blood that are to account for the improvements described above. Finding such compounds would open gates to the development of anti-aging therapeutics in the form of pills or injections. Obviously, these new data provide only a very preliminary evidence of a potential anti-aging strategy, and the effects that it could have in humans are completely unknown to scientists yet.