Longevity Briefs: Can Stem Cells Reverse Frailty In Old Age?

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:

As the average age of the population increases, so too does the incidence of age-related frailty – a loss of strength, endurance and resilience against injury with increasing age. Healthy stem cell populations appear to be key to maintaining resilience. When tissues sustain damage, stem cells multiply to produce new cells, replacing those that have been lost and restoring the tissue to its original state. Unfortunately, stem cell populations dwindle with increasing age.

Many unethical private clinics offer unproven stem cell therapies for the treatment of various conditions including ageing. Fortunately, evidence for legitimate uses of stem cells in age-related conditions is slowly building, such as this study. It investigates whether infusions of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) taken from umbilical cords can reverse age-related frailty in humans. MSCs are of particular interest in regenerative medicine because they have the ability to develop into multiple different cell types.

The discovery:

In the study, researchers recruited 30 participants between the ages of 60 and 80 who were classified as frail according to commonly used medical criteria, but who did not have serious health problems. Participants were randomly assigned to receive two injections of either a placebo treatment or human umbilical cord MSCs. They were then followed up over a 6-month period. The trial demonstrated that intravenous MSCs were associated with significant improvements in both subjective and objective physical performance, and that some of these benefits emerged very early on during the trial. For example, they performed better in the timed up and go test (in which subjects stand up, walk 3 metres and sit down again as quickly as possible) and had improved grip strength relative to the placebo group. 

Participants in the treatment group reported higher quality of life in questionnaires, and researchers also measured significantly reduced markers of inflammation among participants receiving MSCs. There was a trend towards improved sleep and mental health too, but these did not reach statistical significance. There was no difference in the rate of adverse events between the two groups.

The implications:

This research suggests that MSCs could be safe and effective for improving quality of life and physical performance in people with age-related frailty. It’s not the first study to do so – previous trials have shown similar benefits for MSCs isolated from the bone marrow of the recipients. The advantage of the human umbilical cord MSCs used in this study is that they have certain traits that make them unlikely to be rejected by the recipient’s immune system, meaning they don’t need to come from the recipient’s own body. They can also be maintained in cell culture for potential mass production.

While encouraging, this was still a relatively small trial and more research will be needed to reproduce these results in larger sample sizes.