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Category: life extension – Page 441

Today, we wish to highlight a new open access publication in which the researchers take a novel approach to the regeneration of the thymus, a small but vitally important organ that is key to our immune system.

The thymus shrinks as we age

The thymus is one of the most important organs in the body, and it is where thymocytes produced in the bone marrow travel to become new T cells before being trained in the lymph nodes to become the defenders of the adaptive immune system. However, as we get older, the thymus increasingly turns to fat and starts to shrink, causing its ability to produce new T cells to fall dramatically. This process is known as thymic involution and actually begins shortly after puberty, so this is one aspect of aging that begins fairly early in life, although it is many decades later before its decline causes serious health issues.

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28 November 2017

Rejuvenation is a medical discipline focused on the practical reversal of the aging process.
Rejuvenation is distinct from life extension. Life extension strategies often study the causes of aging and try to oppose those causes in order to slow aging. Rejuvenation is the reversal of aging and thus requires a different strategy, namely repair of the damage that is associated with aging or replacement of damaged tissue with new tissue. Rejuvenation can be a means of life extension, but most life extension strategies do not involve rejuvenation.

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Aubrey de Grey, Longevity, Diet and Aging. Aubrey de Grey PhD is an English author and biomedical gerontologist and mathematician who has made a significant contribution to the Hadwiger–Nelson problem. He is currently the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation and VP of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics, Inc.
He is editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research, author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging (1999) and co-author of Ending Aging (2007). He is known for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today not to die from age related causes.

In 2013 a study; 2-year old mice were tested for muscle wastage, insulin resistance and inflammation; in humans all are used as indicators of the aging process, they were then given NMN for 1 week. In all cases, after only 1 week the 2-year old mice were reflecting the expected findings of 6-month-old mice in the areas of muscle wastage, insulin resistance and inflammation.

In a later study (2018) Dr. David Sinclair’s team at the Harvard Medical School found that the aging of blood vessels had been reversed. The study showed that mice that were given NMN had restored blood vessel growth and had increased muscle endurance by up to 80%.

Continue reading “How We Will Cure The Diseases of Ageing — with Aubrey de Grey” | >

A group of Spanish researchers, including Dr. Maria Blasco and others at the CNIO, have published a new study that examines the consequences of short telomeres and telomerase deficiency on the brain [1].

This study addresses an aspect of telomere attrition, one of the primary hallmarks of aging. Telomeres are repeating sequences of DNA (TTAGGG) that can can reach a length of 15,000 base pairs and appear at the ends of chromosomes, acting as protective caps. They prevent damage, stop chromosomes from fusing with each other, and prevent chromosomes from losing base pair sequences at their end during cell replication.

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The past year or so has seen an energetic debate over whether or not new neurons are generated in the adult human brain, a process known as neurogenesis. This process is well known and well studied in mice, and thought to be very important in the resilience and maintenance of brain tissue. The human data has always been limited, however, due to the challenges inherent in working with brain tissue in living people, and it was assumed was that the mouse data was representative of the state of neurogenesis in other mammals. In this environment, the publication of a careful study that seemed to rule out the existence of neurogenesis in adult humans produced some upheaval, and spurred many other teams to assess the human brain with greater rigor than was previously the case.

So far, all of the following studies published so far do in fact show evidence of adult neurogenesis in humans. This is the better of the two outcomes, as the regenerative medicine community has based a great deal of work on the prospect of being able to upregulate neurogenesis in order to better repair injuries to the central nervous system, or partially reverse the decline of cognitive function in the aging brain. The study here is particularly reassuring, as it shows that even in very late life there are signs that new neurons are being generated in the brain.

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The researchers of a new publication take a look at the effects of obesity on aging and consider its impact in the context of the Hallmarks of Aging, a popular theory that breaks down aging into nine distinct processes.

The case for obesity accelerating aging

Being overweight and carrying excessive amounts of visceral fat, a type of body fat that is stored in the abdominal cavity and surrounds a number of important internal organs, such as the liver, pancreas, and intestines, is known to increase the risk of age-related diseases.

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We are pleased to announce the launch of the Longevity Book Club hosted by LEAF Director Javier Noris, where you can join other longevity enthusiasts in reading the most interesting works that relate to our mission of ending age-related diseases.

You will also get the opportunity to listen to discussion panels and take part in Q&A sessions that are focused on books that touch on these important scientific, philosophical, moral and futuristic longevity topics. This is the ideal place to meet like-minded longevity enthusiasts who are working on building their knowledge on longevity and all of the implications that come with ending age-related diseases.

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