[QUOTE]Two teams of scientists published studies on Sunday showing that blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice, rejuvenating their muscles and brains. As ghoulish as the research may sound, experts said that it could lead to treatments for disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease.“I am extremely excited,” said Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research. “These findings could be a game changer.”
The research builds on centuries of speculation that the blood of young people contains substances that might rejuvenate older adults.
In the 1950s, Clive M. McCay of [URL="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/cornell_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org"]Cornell University[/URL] and his colleagues tested the notion by delivering the blood of young rats into old ones. To do so, they joined rats in pairs by stitching together the skin on their flanks. After this procedure, [URL="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1805858/"]called parabiosis[/URL], blood vessels grew and joined the rats’ circulatory systems. The blood from the young rat flowed into the old one, and vice versa.
Later, Dr. McCay and his colleagues performed necropsies and found that the cartilage of the old rats looked more youthful than it would have otherwise. But the scientists could not say how the transformations happened. There was not enough known at the time about how the body rejuvenates itself.
It later became clear that [URL="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/stemcells/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"]stem cells[/URL] are essential for keeping tissues vital. When tissues are damaged, stem cells move in and produce new cells to replace the dying ones. As people get older, their stem cells gradually falter.
In the early 2000s, scientists realized that stem cells were not dying off in aging tissues.
“There were plenty of stem cells there,” recalled [URL="https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/thomas-rando"]Thomas A. Rando[/URL], a professor of neurology at [URL="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/stanford_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org"]Stanford University[/URL] School of Medicine. “They just don’t get the right signals.”
Dr. Rando and his colleagues wondered what signals the old stem cells would receive if they were bathed in young blood. To find out, they revived Dr. McCay’s experiments.
The scientists joined old and young mice for five weeks and then examined them. The muscles of the old mice had healed about as quickly as those of the young mice, the [URL="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7027/abs/nature03260.html"]scientists reported in 2005[/URL]. In addition, the old mice had grown new liver cells at a youthful rate.
The young mice, on the other hand, had effectively grown prematurely old. Their muscles had healed more slowly, and their stem cells had not turned into new cells as quickly as they had before the procedure.
The experiment indicated that there were compounds in the blood of the young mice that could awaken old stem cells and rejuvenate aging tissue. Likewise, the blood of the old mice had compounds that dampened the resilience of the young mice.
[URL="http://hsci.harvard.edu/people/amy-wagers-phd"]Amy J. Wagers[/URL], a member of Dr. Rando’s team, continued to study the blood of young mice after she moved in 2004 to Harvard, where she is an associate professor. Last year, she and her colleagues demonstrated that it could rejuvenate the hearts of old mice.
To pinpoint the molecules responsible for the change, Dr. Wagers and her colleagues screened the animals’ blood and found that a protein called GDF11 was abundant in young mice and scarce in old ones. To see if GDF11 was crucial to the parabiosis effect, the scientists produced a supply of the protein and injected it into old mice. Even on its own, [URL="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286741300456X"]GDF11 rejuvenated their hearts[/URL].
Dr. Wagers and her colleagues wondered whether GDF11 was responsible for the rejuvenation of other tissues. In the current issue of the journal Science, they report an experiment on skeletal muscle in mice. They found that [URL="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1251152"]GDF11 revived stem cells in old muscles[/URL], making old mice stronger and increasing their endurance.
At Stanford, researchers were investigating whether the blood of young mice altered the brains of old mice. In 2011, Saul Villeda, then a graduate student, and his colleagues [URL="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170097/"]reported that it did[/URL]. When old mice received young blood, they had a burst of new neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that is crucial for forming memories.
In a study published Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine, Dr. Villeda, now a faculty fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues unveiled more details of [URL="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nm.3569"]what young blood does to the brains[/URL] of old mice.
After parabiosis, Dr. Villeda and his colleagues found that the neurons in the hippocampus of the old mice sprouted new connections. They then moved beyond parabiosis by removing the cells and platelets from the blood of young mice and injecting the plasma that remained into old mice. That injection caused the old mice to perform far better on memory tests.
Dr. Wagers’s team has been investigating a specific region of the brain involved in perceiving smells.
In a second study in Science, the team reported that parabiosis spurred the[URL="http://dx.doi.org/%2010.1126/science.1251141"]growth of blood vessels in the brain[/URL]. The new blood supply led to the growth of neurons and gave older mice a sharper sense of smell.
After linking the GDF11 protein to the rejuvenation of skeletal muscle and the heart, Dr. Wagers and her colleagues studied whether the protein was also responsible for the changes in the brain. They injected GDF11 alone into the mice and found that it spurred the growth of blood vessels and neurons in the brain, although the change was not as large as that from parabiosis.
“There’s no conflict between the two groups, which is heartening,” said [URL="http://my.clevelandclinic.org/staff_directory/staff_display.aspx?doctorid=814"]Dr. Richard M. Ransohoff[/URL], director of the Neuroinflammation Research Center at the Cleveland Clinic.
Dr. Ransohoff and others hope the experiments on mice will lead to studies on people to see if the human version of GDF11, or other molecules in the blood of young people, has a similar effect on older adults.
“We can turn back the clock instead of slowing the clock down,” said [URL="https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/spokespeople/finkel-toren.html"]Dr. Toren Finkel[/URL], director of the Center for Molecular Medicine at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. “That’s a nice thought if it pans out.”[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/science/young-blood-may-hold-key-to-reversing-aging.html?partner=rss&emc=rss[/url]
So in a way vampires aren't totally folklore.
Cue the Twilight fans feasting on blood! Or rather, old twilight fans!
Still wasn't enough to save Dear Leader :'(
yes finally all these years ive spent collecting the blood of children will finally pay off
Well shit, I'll have to go eat some infants! The cannibals had it right all along!
But really, even if this is in mice, advances in blood manufacturing mixed with this could mean we'll be drinking synthesized infant blood in our coca-cola. Yum?
turns out Elizabeth Báthory had it right all along
[editline]5th May 2014[/editline]
excuse me as i bathe in the blood of young virgin girls
blood for the Blood God
[QUOTE=June;44729073]turns out Elizabeth Báthory had it right all along[/QUOTE]
I came here to post this. fuck
and does old blood holds the key for aging faster?
Parents should give it to young babies so they grow faster and they don't have to spend as much on diapers.
great family guy was right on this one...
"as per the laws of Hollywood this young brunettes youth is to be transfered over to James woods"
[editline]5th May 2014[/editline]
so if we engineer people to have the same aging effects that super centurians have and couple it with artificially cultivated young blood, we could live eternally young?
[QUOTE=ah!panic;44729096]and does old blood holds the key for aging faster?
Parents should give it to young babies so they grow faster and they don't have to spend as much on diapers.[/QUOTE]
there's a difference between growing and aging
[QUOTE=Joazzz;44729074]blood for the Blood God[/QUOTE]
trust me, I've been terrorizing blood donation centers in the name of [I]bloody[/I] science.
Now we can resurrect walt disney so he can he can deal with what disney has become.
[QUOTE=Sableye;44729097]great family guy was right on this one...
"as per the laws of Hollywood this young brunettes youth is to be transfered over to James woods"
[editline]5th May 2014[/editline]
so if we engineer people to have the same aging effects that super centurians have and couple it with artificially cultivated young blood, we could live eternally young?[/QUOTE]
In short no, a longer explanation would be you'd maybe live another 10 or 15 years.
[QUOTE=Pelican;44729079]I came here to post this. fuck[/QUOTE]
was reminded of the Hostel 2 scythe scene; fuck
Well, we just need to figure out what it is in the blood of youths that can trigger rejuvenation like this (stem cells is probably one ingredient), then isolate the factors, concentrate to an optimal degree whilst not being dangerous, perform dark alchemical sorceries and voila!, we'll have the same stuff Bruce Forsyth has been injecting for the last few decades.
[img]http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01131/arts-graphics-2008_1131682a.gif[/img]
But in all seriousness, working out these secrets to eternal youth could be the key to potent life-extension. And then we can focus on retrovirus-assisted genetic repairs to iron out the kinks of old age by rewriting the DNA of every cell in the human body. Whilst it doesn't ensure immortality per-se, since our genes decay anyway from all the free radicals and radiation of the world, but being able to "defrag" and optimise one's genetic code to prevent system malfunctions and overall decline would hopefully not be something that you could only do once, meaning you could theoretically do it as many times as there is time in the universe so long as the tech is around and you can pay the Keepers of the Fountain.
That said, having a lot of undying folks in the world wouldn't help with the population problems, but it'd only be a temporary solution until we can turn ourselves into sapient swarms of nanomachines and no longer need as many resources to survive.
Imagine a farm of cloned humans that we just harvest blood from.
Young Blood sounds like a rapper name.
[QUOTE=assassin_Raptor;44729653]Imagine a farm of cloned humans that we just harvest blood from.[/QUOTE]
Reminds me of a few sci-fi vampire films, like Blade Trinity and Daybreakers. Both had similar situations presented.
I thought alchemy died out some time after the renaissance
I, for one, would like to say fuck this society. I'm going to go live in a cave and have a pint untill this whole blood magic thing blows over.
-snop-
Oh, that's why all the healing potions in games are red.
[QUOTE=FurrehFaux;44729912]alchemy is the transformation of various metals into gold[/QUOTE]
Not just, historically another major part of alchemy was pursuing an elixir of life, which supposedly conferred everlasting youth and reverted aging.
If you insist on ruining people's jokes with pedantry, at least fact-check.
Now we need to figure out how to revert our stem cells to their prime, without inventing a time machine first.
[QUOTE=Joazzz;44729074]blood for the Blood God[/QUOTE]
Asia for the Asians, Africa for the Africans, and Transavia for the Vampires.
[QUOTE=Joazzz;44729074]blood for the Blood God[/QUOTE]
The Dark Elves were right all along.
Time to start worshipping Khaine.
Problem is, that even if we ever discovered a "cure" for aging, it would have an incredible impact on society. It would make the current division of super-rich and the rest look like paradise.
I don't think the secret to aging is in the blood, but it might be part of it. There have been discoveries of genes that cause our cells to have a limited division rate. (Telomeres get shorter each time a cell divides). There have been studies done on it with lab rats, if they deactivate the gene, they make the rat live twice as long. Basically, this will mean that after puberty our body will not degenerate ever, until we die. We will be in the same health at 100 as we were when we were 10. It's strange that our genes contain info to limit our ages.
Source: [url]http://www.science20.com/news_articles/daf16_aging_gene_governs_lifespan_humans[/url]
There are also other possibilities. Synthetic organs, becoming cyborgs, microbots that repair our cells, etc.
[editline]5th May 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=proch;44730528]Problem is, that even if we ever discovered a "cure" for aging, it would have an incredible impact on society. It would make the current division of super-rich and the rest look like paradise.[/QUOTE]
That's true. However, there still would be disease and murder. If you're worried about overpopulation, that could still be fixed through starvation and colonization of other planets.
will there ever be a rainbow?
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