Monthly aging treatment aims to help you live long and die healthy

If you could live to a ripe old age, but with a youthful spring in your step, would you take the chance? Researchers are now turning that fantasy into a reality. They’ve devised a treatment for aging that doesn’t just add years to your life — it adds life to your years.

Longer life, but at what cost?

It’s a fact of modern life: we’re all living longer. Thanks to advancements in medicine and public health, human lifespans have grown incredibly over the last century.

But there’s a catch. These extra years don’t always come with good health. Chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease often become unwelcome companions in later life, followed by frailty.

Most interventions focus on prolonging life, but not necessarily good health, leading to a significant health decline in the last decade of life. In short, no one wants to spend their added years in decrepitude.

New treatment promises healthy aging

But what if that feeble decline isn’t our fate? In their research, published in the August issue of Cell Metabolism, University of Connecticut School of Medicine gerontologist, Dr. Ming Xu, and his team have shown that this doesn’t have to be the case.

Their breakthrough? A new treatment that allowed a group of mice to live 9% longer with monthly treatments — that’s about 79 extra days of energy-filled life for our furry friends.

The treatment involved targeting and removing inflammatory cells from the body. These cells contribute to aging and age-related diseases. By eliminating them, researchers were able to extend lifespan and improve overall health.

But the real success wasn’t just the extension of life; it was the vitality that came with it. The treated mice showed impressive strength, maintaining their grip and walking speed up to the very end of their lives.

In human terms, that’s like an 80-year-old running around like they’ve found the fountain of youth!

How the aging treatment works

What sets this research apart is the record-keeping and aging measurements carried out. In contrast to most experiments that select a specific end point in time and measure the effect of the treatment then, Dr. Ming Xu and his collaborators embarked on a longitudinal study.

They tracked the health, grip strength, and walking speed of the mice from the time they were 20 months old (about 60 in human years) until their death.

This approach allowed them to assess the physical function and overall health changes of each mouse throughout the entire treatment period.

And here’s the exciting part: even though the treated mice were older at their time of death, their physical function and overall frailty were better than the untreated controls.

Very successful in mice

“We are all very excited about this finding,” says Dr. Xu. “It demonstrates that we not only extend the lifespan, but indeed extend life with good health in mice, which is a key goal for the aging field.”

While the findings from UConn are undoubtedly exciting, further research is necessary to bridge the gap between animal studies and human application.

Future studies must explore various variables such as dosage, treatment duration, and the effects of this intervention across different ages and genetic backgrounds.

Future aging treatments

The research involved two groups of mice. One received monthly treatments to remove highly inflammatory cells from their tissues, and the other group, kept as a control, did not.

The cells targeted for removal were those actively expressing a specific gene known as p21. The oldest treated mice lived to be 43 months old — equivalent to about 130 years in human terms.

The average treated mouse, meanwhile, lived longer and healthier than an average untreated mouse.

Now, the real question is, can this translate to humans? If it can, it would mean 8 to 10 additional years of healthy old age.

It’s an exciting prospect in the field of aging, and the researchers are currently exploring ways to bring their results to our lives.

Innovative scientific studies like this one give us hope for the future — hope for a future where aging doesn’t equate to frailty, where we can live longer, healthier, and fuller lives.

This intriguing research was primarily supported by the NIH National Institute on Aging, American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), and Hevolution Foundation.

The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

—–

Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates. 

Check us out on EarthSnap, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

—–