Good news! Amazing stuff! Are we closer to a fountain of youth?
Do more exercise to keep your brain healthy and young!
In the past it was rather advisable to distrust any claims that young blood had significant positive effects on older individuals. Or were duped to prevent a blood orgy or a surge in blood transfusions?
I blogged here about this research in August of 2023.
"Give an old mouse the blood of a young one, and the aged creature will experience a youthful resurgence of sharp thinking alongside the growth of new brain cells. It has been more than 150 years since scientists started documenting the brain-restoring properties of this kind of blood transfer. Ever since, they have been working to uncover the details about what is in the young blood that can help the older brain.
Now, scientists have converged on a molecule that appears to play a major role. In three new studies published simultaneously in August 2023, overlapping teams of researchers independently found evidence along three different lines implicating a protein called platelet factor 4 (PF4) in brain rejuvenation. Released by platelets into the blood as a result of various forms of activation, PF4 appears to mediate inflammation and stimulate neurogenesis, leading mice to do better on measures of memory and other forms of cognitive performance. ...
Each platelet contains more than 1,000 bioactive molecules, known as platelet factors, that get released in different combinations when platelets are activated, these studies show. A variety of stimuli can activate platelets, including infection, exercise and injury. And the kinds of factors they release depend on the type of activation they undergo. ...
Several years ago, ... team discovered some of the first hints that one of those hundreds of molecules, PF4, might be particularly important. The group was trying to explain why exercise increases neurogenesis in the hippocampus, a brain region important for learning and memory. ...
They found about 80 factors whose abundance in the blood changed significantly after exercise, ... and PF4 was among those that rose the most. ...
When the researchers injected PF4 into the bloodstream of older mice through their tails on a schedule of one injection every third day for 24 days, as the group reported in August 2023 ... the old mice behaved much more like young mice in the avoidance task and other memory tests. ...
Although PF4 didn’t appear to cross the blood-brain barrier, ... his team’s data show that PF4 affects the peripheral immune system — reducing the number of pro-aging immune factors in circulation, decreasing neuroinflammation and enhancing cognitive function. ...
Each platelet contains more than 1,000 bioactive molecules, known as platelet factors, that get released in different combinations when platelets are activated, these studies show. A variety of stimuli can activate platelets, including infection, exercise and injury. And the kinds of factors they release depend on the type of activation they undergo. ...
Several years ago, ... team discovered some of the first hints that one of those hundreds of molecules, PF4, might be particularly important. The group was trying to explain why exercise increases neurogenesis in the hippocampus, a brain region important for learning and memory. ...
They found about 80 factors whose abundance in the blood changed significantly after exercise, ... and PF4 was among those that rose the most. ...
When the researchers injected PF4 into the bloodstream of older mice through their tails on a schedule of one injection every third day for 24 days, as the group reported in August 2023 ... the old mice behaved much more like young mice in the avoidance task and other memory tests. ...
Although PF4 didn’t appear to cross the blood-brain barrier, ... his team’s data show that PF4 affects the peripheral immune system — reducing the number of pro-aging immune factors in circulation, decreasing neuroinflammation and enhancing cognitive function. ...
Meanwhile, in a separate lab on a different campus of UCSF, Dena Dubal was pursuing research on a protein called klotho, which was named after Clotho, the Greek fate and daughter of Zeus who determines when we are born and when we die. Klotho declines with age, but studies show that people with genetic variants that lead them to produce higher levels of it tend to live longer and be more resistant to the diseases of aging. Mice that are engineered to be deficient in klotho die prematurely.
A decade ago, ... team linked klotho, often called a longevity protein, with better cognitive function in both young and old mice. Injecting the hormone, they found a few years later, boosted cognitive performance even in mice with dementia-like brain damage — even though klotho didn’t cross the blood-brain barrier. ...
To search for messengers that might be mediators between klotho and the brain, ... colleagues started by injecting klotho into mice and then analyzing their blood to see what changed. When they measured an increase in platelet factors — especially PF4 — they followed up by adding klotho directly to platelets. Those lab experiments confirmed that klotho mildly activates the blood cells. ...
Next came the big test: they injected PF4 into mice and assessed cognition through a battery of maze tasks. The results, published in August 2023 ... showed that PF4 recapitulated the effects of klotho, improving brain function in both young and old mice. PF4 had benefits even in the absence of klotho. ..."
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