Longevity Daily – 3rd and 4th of August

Everyday our team of researchers in Oxford are inundated with scientific, and medical research articles that have the potential to improve health, wellbeing, and longevity. In this blog we highlight a few of them that caught our attention today.

We try to update this blog daily.

4th August, 2020

1. AgelessRx is an online pharmacy that specializes in selling longevity related pharmaceutical drugs. Recently, it announced that it will be recruiting up to 1,000 people to conduct an anti-aging clinical trial to test whether the immunosuppressive drug Rapamycin can increase human longevity.
   • Their clinical trial is called Participatory Evaluation (of) Aging (With) Rapamycin (for) Longevity Study (PEARL).
   • According to AgelessRx this Phase 4 Rapamycin clinical trial aims t to establish a long-term safety profile, determine the long-term efficacy of Rapamycin in reducing clinical aging measures, and biochemical and physiological endpoints associated with declining health and aging in healthy older adults.
     
     
2. The process of biological aging slowly, but surely, causes our bodies to fall apart. In addition, various parts of our bodies age at varying rates. Therefore, we need to find ways to monitor our inner physiological process, so that we can catch issues before they become big problems.
   • A yet-to-be-peer-reviewed research article published yesterday claims to be able to perform noninvasive, non-contact measurements of electrical signals produced by action potentials in nerve cells, or muscle cells, by detecting magnetic fields generated by the current from action potentials in living tissue using nitrogen vacancy centres in diamond.
   • If this technique can be demonstrated to be effective it could significantly lower the cost of measuring the health of our brain, muscle, and nervous system.
     
     
3. There is convincing evidence that factors in the blood play an important role in the ageing process. Connecting the circulatory systems of a young mouse and an old mouse (parabiosis) rejuvenates the tissues of the old mouse and extends their lifespan. Understanding how factors in the blood change as humans age could help us identify new targets for age-related disease.
   • This study measuring human plasma proteins identified waves of changes in the proteome in the fourth, seventh and eighth decades of life reflected distinct biological pathways associated with age related disease. Each wave was largely composed of different proteins.
   • Identifying plasma proteins that promote or antagonise ageing at different stages of life could lead to more targeted therapeutics and preventative therapies.

3rd August, 2020

1. High blood pressure (hypertension) is major cause of premature death worldwide, with upwards of 1 in 4 men, and 1 in 5 women – over a billion people ­– having the condition.
   • In this new Phase 2, randomized, and double-blind study researchers in Egypt tried to see whether two herbal products Hibiscus sabdariffa (roselle plant), and Olea europaea (Olive) could effectively treat hypertension, compare to the pharmaceutical drug Captopril.
   • The authors report that the two herbal products collectively were able to significantly reduce blood pressure (mean reduction of 15.4/9.6 mmHg (p < .0001)), and triglyceride levels in the 134 patients enrolled in the trial.
     
     
2. It is generally understood that women live longer than men. Therefore researchers tried to figure out if this rule was true among other mammal, and animals. In this recent paper titled Sex differences in adult lifespan and aging rates of mortality across wild mammals they find that among animals there is no gender based difference in longevity. They also find that longevity is mainly affected by the risks taken by animals during reproduction, and due to other environmental conditions.
   
   
3. Studies have shown that late parenthood is associated with worse health outcomes and higher mortality amongst the offspring. However, this study of mortality in Sweden suggest that the effects of reproductive ageing were counterbalanced by later birth cohorts living longer. Those born to older mothers did not suffer any significant mortality disadvantage, and those born to older fathers had lower mortality.