Scientific reporting on treatments for ageing. Installment 1
There is real credible science occuring about the retarding or preventing of mitgation of aging.
Subscriptions are free.
Introduction
I have read that both spellings “ageing” and “aging” are correct. So I use an example of each. I think going forward I am going to use “ageing”
I have come across enough research that I think it is worth while collecting in a single post.
Biological science is beginning to tackle the issue of ageing. It is a biological phenomenon like any other biological phenomenon and subject to scientific research.
It isn’t quackery anymore, but there will be ups and downs with this research. Things that seems to be promising will not prove useful, other things that didn’t seem likely to be useful, will turn out to have great benefits.
Much of the initial benefit of this research is keeping people healthy as they get older. I know however, Gays generally hope to retard aging and if possible reverse it. The science is now more about keeping people healthy, but science is always progressing.
The Gay agenda should be supporting biological research in general. We will be beneficiaries in multiple ways. The mRNA HIV vaccines will come from the developments in biological science. Treatments for people already having HIV come out of new research in gene therapies, CRISPR, and other biological inquiries.
This directory will go from the oldest to the newest items.
In this issue I report on a big break though on aging, which is imminent and somethings you can do now.
The article I reviewed in this issue, was somewhat involved. They had another article which was much easier to understand. This is the link to the article.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01370-4
In the following is my major article on scientific developments in slowing or stopping ageing. 20230127. This is a good introduction to the topic.
In the following there is a link to the article or newsletter in which I first posted the information followed by a copy of what I reported in that newsletter or post.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN TALKS ABOUT SLOWING AGING
Scientific American has been published since 1845 and it highly respected popular science magazine.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/decoded-aging
This just has a short item.
Ageing is just a technological/biotechnology problem
I don’t think this is going to be a fountain of you thing. It will be likely that they will find ways of slowing down aging. Nature magazine is one of the two most prestigious science magazines in the English speaking world. Study is titled, “Ageing studies in five animals suggest how to reverse decline.” You can’t access the article.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01040-x
Of course, none of this will do you any good if you are accelerating your aging by bad habits or drop dead because of health issues, like morbid obesity.
I share this to let people know two things.
1. Aging is just a technology/biotechnology problem. Aging is not mystical, but a complex biomolecular issue. Like anything in the material world, it is something that can be studied and dealt with.
2. Biotechnology, biology, and medicine are progressing at a stunning pace. New means of investigations are being developed at a rapid pace. One article explains how cyro electron microscopy allows the viewing of extremely small biological structures. Another article announces that AI has not only solved the protein folding problem, but did it for hundreds of millions of linear protein sequences.
For Gays this becomes a policy issue in that we want to support research into medicine, biology, and the sciences in general.
Taurine seems to be effective in slowing aging
These are two articles from Nature and Science. They are the two leading scientific periodicals in the world.
Nature magazine has the article which is more readable to the non-specialist.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01910-4
This is more the article for specialists.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn9257
Some cautions. Though they see an effect, they don’t know why it works. This is just the first paper. It remains to be seen if other scientists can confirm these effects and the critical review of the scientific community. There was the sirtuins debacle which was supposed to be an answer for aging, but didn’t pan out.
However, given that they report positive effects in monkeys is encouraging. A lot of times things happen in mice, or worms, but not in humans. Monkeys are rather close on the evolutionary tree to humans.
Should you take it?
I think as long as it is cheap and easy to take you might. It is going to take some time to verify whether it works or not for humans, but you are aging right now. The worst outcome would be a little money lost. A decade ago, taking vitamin E was very popular as an anti-aging supplement. However, investigations showed that it had no impact.
Some thoughts on this.
First, more and more aging is seen as a legitimate topic of scientific study. Also, with modern molecular biology things that really couldn’t be investigated before, can be investigated now. The Science article in the editor’s summary points out that the scientists looked at DNA damage, telomerase deficiency, impaired mitochondrial function, and cellular senescence. With current molecular biological science and technology, scientific investigations can be conducted that were not possible before.
Second, they still haven’t understood how taurine supplements work to produce their anti-aging benefits. This is really of interest. Because figuring out why taurine works, likely will give insight into how aging works and contribute greatly to the understanding of the molecular biology of aging. Perhaps it will lead to something that is more anti-aging, or just build up the knowledge base.
Another possible treatment for ageing.
Nature magazine is one of the two most prestigious science magazines in the English-speaking world.
This article is titled, “Anti-ageing protein injection boosts monkeys’ memories.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02214-3
This article is Ars Technica and is less technical.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/07/one-shot-of-a-kidney-protein-gave-monkeys-a-brain-boost/
From the article:
“Cognitive decline from aging is one of our most pressing biomedical problems without truly effective medicines,” says Dena Dubal, a professor of neurology at UCSF and the study’s senior author. After discovering—accidentally—in previous work that klotho boosts cognition in mice, she says, “it became important to test this in a brain like ours.”
Produced by the kidney, klotho circulates in the blood and has been linked to health and lifespan. Orson Moe, a kidney specialist and professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, describes it as a housekeeper that helps regulate the kidneys and metabolism. “It protects us and keeps us healthy,” he says.
The protein was first discovered in 1997 by pathologist Makoto Kuro-o at the National Institute of Neuroscience in Tokyo. He demonstrated that mice lacking klotho suffered from what he called a “syndrome that resembles human aging.”
Monkeys are fairly close to humans so a treatment that works with them and is safe is very likely to work on humans and safe. For new methods of treating diseases monkeys or other primates are used for testing efficacy and safety before a Phase I trial to test for initial safety and signs of efficacy.
This testing showed improvements for two weeks and it was modest. This is just an initial test to see if further investigation should be done. From the results, scientists will be very motivated to do further research.
Besides this being an encouraging development in the science of retarding aging, there are other things to learn from this development.
Aging isn’t mystical or beyond science. It is a physical phenomenon that can be understood scientifically and dealt with scientifically. This isn’t the first time I have reported on a scientific breakthrough regarding aging.
In the article they don’t know why it works. That isn’t a bad thing. The fact that it does work is a guidepost that there is something to be discovered about aging. That is there is more to learn about aging.
Once it is understood how it works, likely some other drug will be found to do the same thing and something that doesn’t require injections. Science and technology just keep going.
All the posts with information or news about anti-ageing research have been collected in this post. This information will be added to it, and what reporting the weekly newsletters might have in the future will be added to it.
20231113 Anti-Aging molecule found in a wide variety of foods, so you don’t have to swallow.
It is now behind a paywall. I want to show the links to either Nature.com or sciencemag.org to show that these are some findings by crackpots, but serious legitimate authoritative scientists.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03224-x
The molecule is called spermidine, because it was first isolated from sperm, but it is found in a lot of foods.
“Spermidine delays aging in humans” The important thing about this article is that eating it seems to help
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128428/
National Library of Medicine. A U.S. govt. website
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8612618/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-022-00322-9
What foods you might find it in, is in this article.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3022763/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermidine
When this post fills up, the link to Installment 2 will be here.