Longevity Briefs: Can Hallucinogenic Mushrooms Extend Lifespan?

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Longevity briefs provides a short summary of novel research in biology, medicine, or biotechnology that caught the attention of our researchers in Oxford, due to its potential to improve our health, wellbeing, and longevity.

The problem:

Ageing isn’t just one single process – it has many different components like telomere shortening, DNA damage and mitochondrial dysfunction. As such, it’s highly unlikely that any existing ‘miracle compound’ is going to stop ageing entirely or radically extend human lifespan. That doesn’t mean we can’t look for natural compounds that modulate the ageing process. Doing so can be very useful, as studying the mechanism of action of such compounds can teach us more about how we age and what components of biological ageing are important.

Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound found in certain mushrooms, and it has shown promise in treating various mental health conditions. Researchers are also interested in its potential impact on the ageing process. Studies have shown that there is a relationship between mental health conditions like depression and accelerated ageing, marked by accelerated telomere shortening. Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of the chromosomes. They shorten each time the DNA is copied during cell division, eventually preventing further divisions when the telomeres become too short. There is some evidence that restoring telomere length can reverse ageing to an extent in animals. In this study, researchers investigate whether psilocybin might work in part by maintaining telomere length, which would have implications for its effects on ageing both within and outside of the brain.

The discovery:

Researchers investigated the effects of psilocin (the active product of psilocybin after it has been digested) on cellular and animal lifespan. Firstly, they took human lung and skin fibroblasts (cells that make up connective tissue) and allowed them to divide in the presence of either psilocin or a control substance. They found that cells cultured with psilocin were able to divide significantly more times than control cells. In total, the population of treated cells underwent around 47 doublings before reaching senescence (the state in which division is no longer possible), while untreated cells underwent just under 30 doublings.

There was no significant difference between the two groups when the cells were young, but by the time the cells had been cultured for around 60 days, the doubling time of the treated cells was around one day faster than that of the untreated cells. This was found to be associated with differences in telomere length: by day 60, the average telomere length of untreated cells had significantly shortened (by around 2000 base pairs), while in treated cells telomere length was not significantly different to when the experiment began. There was also a significant reduction in oxidative stress (damage caused by metabolic byproducts) and an increased level of SIRT1 (a protein involved in cellular repair and longevity) in the treated cells.

Next, researchers moved to animal experiments. 58 female mice that were 19 months old (roughly equivalent to 60-65 human years) were treated with psilocybin or a control substance once a month for 10 months. The psilocybin treatment involved a low dose (5 mg/kg) initially, followed by a higher dose (15 mg/kg) for subsequent treatments. This is comparable to or below doses used in many human clinical studies. By the time 50% of the control mice had died, 80% of the treated mice were still alive – a statistically significant increase in survival rate.

The implications:

This research provides the first experimental evidence that psilocybin may impact telomere length, which could explain some of its mental health benefits as well as the apparent improved survival shown here. The researchers suggest that psilocybin might exert these effects by activating the SIRT1 gene, which plays a role in regulating senescence.

While these results are worthy of further investigation, it’s too early to draw any conclusions about possible effects in humans. Because psilocybin influences behaviour, it’s possible that behavioural changes could have been responsible for some of the survival effects, though the findings in human cells demonstrate sound molecular mechanisms for lifespan extension. However, since the experiment was stopped once 50% of the control mice were dead, we don’t actually know if maximum lifespan was increased in the treated mice, only that they were significantly more likely to reach 28 months of age.

It is encouraging that psilocybin appeared to improve survival when the mice were already relatively old. Could psilocybin or a substance like it one day be developed to prevent or treat age-related diseases? That remains to be seen.