First hint that body’s ‘biological age’ can be reversed

I suppose this is the holy grail of health and medicine. That said, slowing down the ageing process could lead to some interesting by-products for humanity. More time for brilliant minds to solve problems, painters to paint and authors to produce magnificent literature. More time for corrupt leaders to hurt mankind and more people on the planet would more than likely mean more wars. More people means that we would be depleting our resources at a faster pace.

Using drugs to extend your life is a dilemma. Many people already do that when they are faced with a terminal illness but the idea of taking drugs to extend your life when you're healthy is a quandary. I believe that I would like to live out my time on this planet without the aid of drugs taken for the sole purpose of extending my life.

DRUG TRIAL REVERSES BIOLOGICAL AGING AS SUBJECTS REGAIN 2 YEARS OF YOUTH ON AVERAGE

A small clinical study in California has suggested for the first time that it might be possible to reverse the body’s epigenetic clock, which measures a person’s biological age.

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For one year, nine healthy volunteers took a cocktail of three common drugs — growth hormone and two diabetes medications — and on average shed 2.5 years of their biological ages, measured by analysing marks on a person’s genomes. The participants’ immune systems also showed signs of rejuvenation.

The results were a surprise even to the trial organizers — but researchers caution that the findings are preliminary because the trial was small and did not include a control arm.

“I’d expected to see slowing down of the clock, but not a reversal,” says geneticist Steve Horvath at the University of California, Los Angeles, who conducted the epigenetic analysis. “That felt kind of futuristic.” The findings were published on 5 September in Aging Cell1.

“It may be that there is an effect,” says cell biologist Wolfgang Wagner at the University of Aachen in Germany. “But the results are not rock solid because the study is very small and not well controlled.”

Marks of life
The epigenetic clock relies on the body’s epigenome, which comprises chemical modifications, such as methyl groups, that tag DNA. The pattern of these tags changes during the course of life, and tracks a person’s biological age, which can lag behind or exceed chronological age.

Scientists construct epigenetic clocks by selecting sets of DNA-methylation sites across the genome. In the past few years, Horvath — a pioneer in epigenetic-clock research — has developed some of the most accurate ones.

The latest trial was designed mainly to test whether growth hormone could be used safely in humans to restore tissue in the thymus gland. The gland, which is in the chest between the lungs and the breastbone, is crucial for efficient immune function. White blood cells are produced in bone marrow and then mature inside the thymus, where they become specialized T cells that help the body to fight infections and cancers. But the gland starts to shrink after puberty and increasingly becomes clogged with fat.

Evidence from animal and some human studies shows that growth hormone stimulates regeneration of the thymus. But this hormone can also promote diabetes, so the trial included two widely used anti-diabetic drugs, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and metformin, in the treatment cocktail.

To read the rest of the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02638-w

sounds like it's gonna be combined with mandatory vaccines one day and then used to alter your DNA with digital trackers for monetary transactions that rank with your social credit score. Free speech be damned.

I would like to see an improvement in the quality of life at the end stages, instead of years of needless suffering and pain, not just for the patient but their families as well. But then the ethical dilemmas start to emerge. For example if you were to pass at say 80 and years 77-80 you were bedridden and not quite there mentally and a new wonder drug allowed you to regain life quality on the proviso you can't live beyond 80 is it worth taking? Is overpopulation a consideration? Oh the possibilities are endless.