Forbidden Fruits of Aging Research !

The research on aging has been one of the ‘Hot Cake’ that researchers all over the world try to bake in their laboratories, and people in general try to sniff the aroma coming out of it, if not have the real bite.

Many leads on the aging research have come about in last few decades but their translation into clinics has eluded thus far. A couple of leads that I am going to discuss today are promising but have their own pros and cons.

The first approach is associated with telomere shortening. Telomere, discovered in 1970s, is the terminal part of the DNA in chromosomes, which protects the chromosomes from degradation. However, every time when a cell divides its DNA replicates.  Due to an inbuilt mechanism with every replication of DNA the length of telomere decreases, eventually exposing the terminal genes to be inactivated or degraded leading to aging and other related health problems.

A number of age-related diseases are associated with short telomeres like Alzheimer’s disease.

The length of telomeres shrink due to many reasons including very low levels of telomerase in most body cells, DNA replication mechanism itself and a variety of stresses that one has to face including emotional and environmental stress. Scientists have not found as yet the full proof solution to solve this problem.

Interestingly enough, I had discussed in my earlier write-up that somehow telomeres in a man's sperm tend to get longer with age, which means that his children will have longer telomeres to begin with and would live longer.

Scientists believe that if somehow the length of telomere is prevented from decreasing, the life of the cells and the individual with those cells could be extended. This is theoretically possible to achieve by activating an enzyme called telomerase that is known to extend the length of telomere.

However, practically increased telomere length and over active telomerase makes cells immortalized and cancerous. Consequently, question regarding which cells to be targeted when it comes to protecting the telomere length is a complicated one.

Another approach is the use of antioxidants to defy aging. Proponents of this approach believe that antioxidants may help slow aging and prevent a number of aging-related diseases.

From ancient times antioxidants have been advocated to have natural anti-aging properties. It is believed that anti-oxidants not only slow down the aging but also prevent many of the aging-related diseases.

Antioxidants are known to inhibit a transcription factor called nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB), which synthesizes many inflammatory substances in body. Activated NF-kB has been implicated in diseases such as cancer, diabetic, cardiovascular, Alzheimer’s disease and other aging-related problems. It is thus understandable that inhibiting NF-kB would slow the aging process. A new research seems to further strengthen this claim.

Published in the journal Nature, a study in mice suggests that NF-kB becomes more active in the hypothalamus of mice as they get older. A mouse lives for nearly 1000 days on an average. When researchers blocked the activity of NF-kB, mice lived longer, roughly 1100 days. On the other hand, when they activated this factor in mice, they lived only 900 days or less.

Although natural antioxidants taken as fruits and vegetables have been found to lower the risk of some chronic aging-related diseases or aging itself, only a few clinical trials using antioxidants have shown anti-aging effects.

The synthetic antioxidants when taken have shown adverse effects. Since NF-kB also plays important role in the body’s immune response that fights against the bacterial and viral pathogens, its complete inhibition using specific inhibitor could be detrimental.

Although there is no direct study linking these two players in the aging process, it would be interesting to know whether antioxidants somehow prevent telomere shortening. A study that I came across suggests that telomeres are vulnerable to oxidative injury, and antioxidants may prevent it from further damage.

Having said that, it is obvious that antioxidants consumed as fruits and vegetables go a long way to protect from diseases and may also slow down aging process.

Thus, for the common man like us it is prudent to stick to our apples, berries, broccolis and carrots, and avoid antioxidant drugs that claim to retain your youth and slow your aging. They may rather pace it!!