Scientists have established that a portion of young blood or an extract from it can renew aging hearts, save their muscles from thickening and excessive stiffness that develop with age. The experiments were carried out on non-bats, but the researchers believe that in the future they will be able to offer a similar medicine to elderly ladies and gentlemen of the human race.
Harvard Medical School professor Richard Lee believes that everything must be done to make the method work in the industry of saving the hearts of aging people from heart attacks, each of which can be fatal. In the light of mortality statistics, such work is no less important than the search for new drugs against cancer, therefore, the approach may be the most fantastic, if only it works.
Professor Lee and his colleagues began by "stitching together" two mice of different ages, forcing young blood to flow in the body of an old individual and vice versa.
After 4 weeks, it turned out that the heart of the older animal had become not too hard and was trying in every possible way to pump blood in quantities characteristic of a young body.
Before (left) and after
It took several more months to decipher the mystery of the witchcraft method of rejuvenation. Finding out what is found in young blood and what is not in old blood, doctors from Harvard stumbled upon a hormone called GDF-11, which works in the body as a growth factor.
The level of this hormone in the body decreases with age. Having isolated GDF-11 in its purest form, the Americans gave several injections to old mice, after the injections, the hearts of elderly animals began to work more vigorously, according to the Cell magazine.
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Similar experiments, in which doctors combined the circulatory systems of mice, were conducted at Stanford. It turned out that young blood stimulates the growth of neurons in the brain, thereby relieving old individuals from senile cognitive decline.
The experiment was made even before the role of the hormone GDF-11 in the "rejuvenation" was clarified, so the doctors from Stanford could only recommend that older people periodically transfuse the blood of 20-year-olds.
The Harvard group is not so “mystical” and is going to offer the aforementioned hormone, or rather, a drug based on it, as an experimental drug. Scientists hope to get the go-ahead to test the substance's supposedly anti-aging effects on elderly patients, whose health will need to be monitored for 4-5 years.
Americans also want to try GDF-11 in their ideas about revitalizing other organs and tissues of the body with its help. Scientists believe that this growth factor controls youth, and as soon as the level of the hormone in the body falls below a certain level, the body begins to age.
Long before humans appeared on Earth, Mother Nature invented aging to prevent the species' problems associated with unemployment, fatigue and hunger. Nobody lives forever.