The phenomenal results of a recent study show that in the very near future, scientists will be able to reverse the process of biological aging.
According to the experiment, a small group of volunteers was given a cocktail with a certain set of drugs for a year. And although the experimenters themselves did not expect anything like this, the final test showed that, as a result of taking the drugs, the volunteers somehow “lost” an average of 2.5 years from their biological age.
The laboratory assessment of the age of the subjects before and after the experiment was carried out based on the so-called epigenetic clock - the degree of DNA methylation, which is rigidly linked to age and is believed to underlie the mechanism of cell aging.
The epigenetic clock is measured by the body's epigenome - a record of chemical changes in the body's DNA. As people age, chemical modifications or tags are added to their DNA that change throughout life, so by looking at these tags, you can accurately measure a person's biological age.
The scientists involved in the study were themselves shocked by the results:
“I expected the clock to slow down, but not start spinning in the opposite direction. It was impossible in principle and looks a little too futuristic,”says Steve Horvath of the University of California Los Angeles, who first reported the results to the press.
At the moment, scientists are not too quick to draw conclusions, since the study was conducted with a very limited number of participants: only nine people took a cocktail with drugs and there was no relying on a control group in such a situation. But if the result is confirmed by further research, it will revolutionize medicine, in the treatment of many diseases and in society in general.
In the study, participants were given growth hormone and two diabetes medications. The scientists then monitored the subjects' epigenetic clocks to understand how they age. In theory, they hoped to at least slightly slow down this process, which would already be a scientific breakthrough and the success of the experiment.
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The idea was also to see how growth hormone would change the tissue in the thymus gland, which helps the body's immune functions and is located in the breast. As a rule, after puberty, it decreases and the general immunity falls, but the scientists hoped to stimulate the immune tissue and, thus, slightly raise the immunity.
Further, after the volunteers took the prescribed drugs for a year, they took DNA from them for analysis and looked at its epigenetic clock.
Professor Horvath says that the first result shocked him so much that he had to carry out not one, as planned, but four studies of the age of patients - using four independent methods. And still, the test showed that each of the volunteers changed significantly and became younger by two and a half years.
Now, despite a relatively small sample, that is, a limited number of participants in the experiment, researchers are very optimistic about the future. In the next experiment, they will test a significantly larger number of people, and people of different age and ethnic groups.
Another surprising effect of the experiment is the stability of its results. So, in fact, drugs were given to people not yesterday, but almost ten years ago, but during the experiment, biochemists did not look at DNA methylation, but completely different parameters. Returning to the study many years later and checking the biological age of the subjects, the scientists just found out that they not only became 2.5 years younger, but the effect of taking drugs persisted all this time.
All three drugs used in the experimental cocktail are already being investigated as ways to combat age-related diseases. However, no one considered the combined effect of their impact and it exceeded all expectations. Now, scientists say, this discovery will radically change all the ways such drugs are tested.
