Scientists Discover Possible Anti-Aging Gene

werelnon writes "The BBC is running an article about researchers who seem to have discovered a gene which controls aging. By stimulating this gene, which when malfunctioning causes premature aging, scientists have managed to prolong the average life span of lab mice from 2 to 3 years. Because a very similar gene is present in humans it is quite possible it will do the same thing for people." From the article: "But there may be downsides with Klotho. The long-lived mice in the new experiments tend to be less fertile. And the gene may also predispose people to diabetes. The trick for researchers will be to find ways of getting the life-enhancing results of Klotho while avoiding the drawbacks."

Comments

the key...

[ErichTheWebGuy]

The trick for researchers will be to find ways of getting the life-enhancing results of Klotho while avoiding the drawbacks

Isn't that always the goal of a research scientist? To find the benefits, while mitigating or eliminating the drawbacks?

Side effects?

[Jason1729]

If you're increasing life expectancy 50%, it seems like decreased fertility would be a benefit, not a drawback. You don't want to cause a population boom.

And how do you distribute this miracle?

[Quadraginta]

You know, it's very likely the only way a beneficial artificial genetic variation like this would reach the masses is by a technology that modifies your genes very soon after conception. Because once you're born, or (worse) reach adulthood, it becomes very tricky and expensive to evade the body's built-in defenses against alien genetic material (e.g. viruses). So even if a life-extending genetic treatment became available, you'd very likely only be able to take advantage of it (1) before you're born or (2) after you become fabulously rich.

And doesn't that open an interesting can of worms? If, for example, it turns out that some people with decently well-off and very foresightful parents can live 50% longer than the rest of us? If you think we have nasty debates now about, say, equal opportunity in college education, just wait a few decades, when it's a question of equal opportunity for that extra 30 years of life...

Re:The older we get the worse shape we are...

[jIyajbe]

My father (who passed away a few months ago) had a major stroke which put him in a wheelchair. He needed help with the most basic life functions. Later, Parkinson's disease starting taking away his mind--very, very slowly, over a period of 10 years. He *knew* he was losing his memories, his ability to read, and even to form a coherent sentence. He could still understand me, and until almost the very end of his life, I could understand him.

For all 15 years of this degenerative process, up until the last two months of his life, he maintained that life was still worth living, and that in spite of everything, he was still enjoying being alive. (Children, marriages, grandchildren...) Only in the last two months did he say he was ready to die. (He went peacefully.)

One anecdotal data point. My point? Us young folks really can't say what old folks want, or will want. Including ourselves.

Re:Quality of life is decreasing

[silverkniveshotmail.]

I think whether or not we're eating organic food is trivial when we're talking about the issues of obesity and diabetes; in fact, I don't know how much of organic food's popularity is about how cool it is and how much of it actually improves health. I think our first steps as a country should be working on portion sizes and nutritional value.
I also do not see how natural organic sugar is going to affect us in any way. Sugar is sugar, our bodies process the sugar from apples the same as the sugar from coke and pepsi, however apples contain many benneficial antioxidants and far less sugar than soda pop. It's just like natural sea salt, it's still just salt.
What we really need is to eat less fast food, and to get off our asses. There are plenty of other things that we can do to help us be more healthy, but until we can start doing those two simple things we're hopeless.

Eat processed food and live longer

[mangu]

What people need to do is just go back to the cave man diet, if its packaged don't eat it.

Yeah, great, that's a perfect plan if you intend to life the 20~25 years lifespan of a cave man. But what people who lament the wide availability of processed food forget is that the use of packaged food is closely correlated with increased life span.

No, I'm not saying that processed food prolongs life, not at all. A correlation does not imply in cause and effect, there could be a common cause for both phenomena. For instance, the problems of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease that you mention could have an alternative explanation: old age. Even if we assume that processed food brings some health problems, those are certainly offset by other advantages in using processed food, because people who live in industrial countries and eat processed food live much longer than people who live in poor countries and eat food directly from nature.

Remember, the industrial system that gives us processed food is the same system that gives us sanitation and advanced health treatment. It's no use eating vegetables fresh from the garden if you don't have treated water to wash them before eating. Even the most "natural" fruit and vegetables are unable to protect us from typhus and cholera.

Perhaps one could eat natural food in an industrial society and get the best of both worlds, maybe that's what you are trying to say. But the system isn't prepared to supply organically grown food for all the 6+ billion people living on Earth today. If it weren't for the hundreds of millions of tons of grain grown with pesticides and fertilizers and now also with genetically modified plants, people would starve.

All in all, the combination of processed food + advanced health treatment has almost doubled the expected lifespan of people living in the industrial countries, compared to a hundred years ago. Given the choice, most people prefer to face the possible risks of diabetes and heart disease in old age rather than dying from other causes before those diseases appear.

Re:Eat processed food and live longer

[cowscows]

You're making improper connections. People who live in industrialized countries aren't living longer primarily because of processed foods. You listed most of the other causes, yet always seem to think that processed foods are what made them possible. Sanitation, refrigeration, and medicine have all been a big help, and all three could easily still exist even if we stopped making processed foods tomorrow.

Washing your fruit off with clean tap water does not make them
"processed". We're talking about foods made from lots of artificial ingredients, stuck in plastic packaging, and placed in long store shelves. They're convenient, and they taste good cause they're full of lots of concentrated sugars. But they aren't natural, they're chemically way different than anything nature would provide, and so our bodies have not evolved to process them in healthy ways. Fertilized crops aren't the problem, it's the fact that so much of our food cannot be efficiently dealt with by our bodies. And so we become fatasses and get diabetes and stuff.

The solution, the easy one, is to stop eating those manufactured foods. We don't need to go back to everyone growing their own vegetables in their own gardens, but we need to be more intelligent about how the food that is grown ends up in front of the average person. The earth can grow plenty of food. Go talk to some farmers, especially in countries where they aren't subsidized. They're having a rough time because prices are so low. The world is growing more food than it needs. People are only starving for political and economical reasons, not because all the farmland is already being used to capacity.

Re:Eat processed food and live longer

[canadian_right]

Organic food doesn't have any advantage over non-organic food. If I buy "normal" fresh fruit, vegatables and meats, and cook them using healthy methods the resulting meal will be just as healthy as if I started with "organic" food. The only difference is that organic food wasn't sprayed with pesticides and only natural fertalizers were used to grow it.

Processed food is the problem. If I process organic food (chop it up, press it, fry it, add salt and sugar, etc...) it will now be unhealthy food.

If you want to eat healthy buy and eat FRESH fruit and vegatables. Buy fresh meat, poultry, and fish. Eat most fruit and vegatables raw. Steam your other vegatbles instead of boiling them. Do NOT deep fry anything. Keep sugary and fatty treats to a minimum. Cut back on the amount of meat you eat (unless you are training vigorously every day you most likely eat more meat than you need). Never drink more than a single glass of pop (soda to the Americans) per day. EXERCISE every day for at least 20 minutes.

Pop/soda is liquid sugar. All deep fried foods have too much fat. Virtually all processed foods have too much sugar, salt, and fat. Processing often reduces the vitamins, fibre, and other good parts of food. Cooking your own food is fun and healthy.

Re:Maybe

[manthrax3]

Something to note is that US citizens live longer than people in any other country... if we make it to 30. The reason it looks like we live shorter lives is because of drug use, car accidents (55,000 deaths / year) and violent crime.

How to Extend Your Life 50% (No Joke)

[Lord Byron II]

Take a look at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005110.html.

Diseases of heart - Heart Attack
Malignant neoplasms - Cancer
Cerebrovascular diseases - Stroke
Chronic lower respiratory diseases - Lung Disease
Diabetes mellitus - Diabetes

Now, heart attacks are caused almost exclusively bad poor diet (too much fat) and not enough exercise. Cancer has strong links with diet (too much fat) and exposure to chemicals. Strokes are "heart attacks of the brain" in that diet and exercise are major contributing factors here too. A good portion, but not all, cases of lung disease are induced or exacerbated by smoking. And (adult onset) diabetes has been linked to diets high in fats and sugars.

So considering that 66% of male deaths and 63% of female deaths were caused by the above diseases, if you can eliminate the causes of those diseases, you're obviously going to increase your chances for a long and healthy life.