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How the world got lost on
the road to an anti-aging pill
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February 23, 2011: by Bill Sardi
There is a very simple measure for any new potential therapy for enhanced longevity: is it either (a) doing at least as well as calorie restriction in mice when it comes to health and longevity, or (b) achieving important results that calorie restriction cannot show in mice – such as outright rejuvenation. The popular supplement resveratrol fails miserably to achieve significant results in either of these goals after more than five years of experimentation and hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding. This means that it is a dead end, or so close to one as makes no real difference. The only value gained lies in incremental improvements in the understanding of metabolism – which could have been achieved while studying more effective paths to the same end goal.
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February 20, 2011: by Bill Sardi
ResveratrolNews.com – Health news headlines today question whether human growth hormone replacement, used by many Americans to overcome the ravages of aging, is just a misdirection.
It is true that the secretion of human growth hormone diminishes with advancing age. But the just-released results of a 22-year study involving a population of genetically-abnormal individuals in Ecuador who produce low amounts of human growth hormone (GHG) and insulin-like growth factor (IGF) reveals this group exhibit no diabetes, almost no cancer and a very low rate of stroke. Strikingly, the blood serum of these people exhibits a double-protective effect: it protects against oxidative damage and gene mutations and also promotes cellular suicide among highly damaged cells.
Laboratory animals, bred to produce low amounts of these hormones, live on average about 30-40% longer. In human terms, that would thrust human populations toward 100-plus-year life spans. Theoretically, humans who produce an insufficient amount of growth hormones should have what is called a square survival curve where most of life is lived without major illness and then you drop dead, said one of the primary researchers involved in the study.
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February 1, 2011: by ResveratrolNews
Erectile dysfunction is a sign of poor circulation and/or high blood sugar which many men depressingly face. Selling at prices up to $18 a pill online, Viagra is the best known pill that induces blood vessels in the penis to widen (dilate) and harden the male organ. Cialis and Levitra are other widely-promoted brands of male potency pills. In the animal laboratory, elevated blood sugar was chemically induced to produce erectile dysfunction and then vardenafil (Levitra) was compared against resveratrol, a widely available herbal supplement that is known to dilate blood vessels in the same manner. Resveratrol was comparable to vardenafil and when both were used there was greater effect. The biggest advantage for resveratrol is that it has many other health benefits. Source: Jan 26, 2011 release at the Journal of Sexual Medicine – ResveratrolNews.com
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: by Bill Sardi
It was Felix Z. Meerson MD, of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences, who in the 1980s began to suggest that the heart could be protected from damage caused from a heart attack by mild amounts of biological stress prior to the event. Dr. Meerson even went so far as to subject animals after a heart attack to low-oxygen (high-altitude) environments which led to complete recovery from heart muscle spasms and a two-fold reduction in scarred tissue.
The most obvious application of cardiac pre-conditioning would be in surgery. The surgical table or immediate post-surgical mortality rate for coronary artery bypass surgery and heart valve surgery is roughly ~3% and 5% respectively.
An effort to pre-condition the heart to withstand temporary mild restriction of oxygenated blood is facilitated by application of tourniquets (blood pressure cuff) to extremities (the thighs) prior to the operating table. This is called remote ischemic preconditioning. It is used successfully prior to bypass and heart valve surgery. So it is not like cardiology is totally ignoring preconditioning.
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January 30, 2011: by Bill Sardi
While it is true that supplemental resveratrol lacks human studies regarding heart health, it appears modern medicine is dragging its feet here. Human studies should have ensued by now. A review at the NIH Clinical Trials website reveals none appear to be even in the planning stages.
The big problem is that the primary end point is cardiac death and there is no ethical way to rapidly test a high-risk group against plain placebo. Almost every adult with heart disease is taking vitamins or medications that may interfere with the results, particularly because resveratrol influences cytochrome P450 liver enzymes and may require dosage adjustment of cardiac drugs in use.(1) Also results are years away and thousands of subjects would have to be tested for a period of up to 5-years to obtain conclusive coronary artery disease mortality data.
It may be easier for modern medicine to retrospectively analyze mortality data among resveratrol pills users like aspirin was first studied than to launch a prospective study. To do that, cardiologists would have to start identifying patients already taking resveratrol pills. But unlike aspirin which generally is provided in two standard doses (81 mg and 325 mg), resveratrol pills come in a wide dosage range (20-1000 mg), making analysis difficult.
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January 24, 2011: by Bill Sardi
A large question looms for longevity seekers. Is there anything short of a calorie-restricted diet that has conclusively been shown to produce longevity? That question can’t be practically answered in humans because a decades-long study would have to be conducted.
For background, a limited-calorie diet, in human terms about one meal a day, has been shown to nearly double the lifespan of most living organisms ranging from fruit flies, roundworms and mice, and there is promising data on monkeys now. But obviously, the Calorie Restriction Society has only a few hundred gaunt-looking members. Food deprivation is not going to be a popular way of living longer.
The pursuit of a molecular mimic of calorie restriction has been fervent. Three molecules have risen to the drawing board stage: rapamycin, an anti-fungal/antibiotic drug; metformin, an anti-diabetic drug; and resveratrol, a red wine molecule.
The idea is to find a small molecule that would enter cellular machinery and tickle the same genes as a calorie-restricted diet.
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January 9, 2011: by ResveratrolNews
Chennai, India (January 9, 2011) – While age-related vision loss of catastrophic proportions is predicted in coming decades, rising from 17 million patients today to 55 million by the year 2050, it’s possible this catastrophe could be averted and lost vision even restored using molecular medicine.
These are the words of Stuart Richer, OD, PhD, speaking at the 10th annual meeting and International Conference on Recent Trends in Therapeutic Advancement of Free Radical Science, in Chennai, India today.
Dr. Richer says modern medicine is just beginning to evaluate data from the first cases where conventional medical and surgical efforts to restore lost vision had been exhausted and a molecular medicine approach was employed under compassionate use. Even other nutritional therapies including antioxidants were ineffective. Molecular medicine, where small molecules are utilized that can pass through the blood-retinal barrier and which can influence the genetic machinery inside living cells, appears to be very promising, says Dr. Richer.
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December 31, 2010: by Bill Sardi
It was a year Americans learned why “their genes are not their biological destiny.”
It was the year Americans began to be sales pitched on the idea of using home test kits to identify gene derived maladies.
It was a year when biologists continued to point in all directions, claiming there are 300 theories of why humans age and they still don’t have any idea which one is correct.
It was the year when the promise of a red wine resveratrol anti-aging pill was “short lived.” But did this pill fizzle, or was it being swept under the rug?
It was the year of the downfall of the Sirtuin1 gene as the “holy grail” of anti-aging.
It was the year telomeres — those end caps on chromosomes — intrigued many and early adaptors excitedly searched for telomere lengthening agents — yet telomeres may just be another misdirection. Maybe longevity seekers ought to be looking at molecules that prevent double-strand DNA breaks rather than telomere lengtheners.
It was a year where mTOR inhibitor drugs (whatever they are) began to be mentioned in place of resveratrol as an anti-aging pill. Yet the mTOR inhibitor drug rapamycin is fraught with side effects and could never be used in a healthy population.
It was a year when microRNA began to be recognized as the predominant way our genes are switched on and off.
It was a year when funding for anti-aging technologies began to dry up and the prospect of an anti-aging pill began to fade.
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December 19, 2010: by Bill Sardi
A professor of medicine says “aspirin is, by a long way, the most amazing drug in the world.” He was responding to a recent study published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, which found the 20-year risk of death was reduced by about 10 percent for prostate cancer, 30 percent for lung cancer, 40 percent for colorectal or bowel cancer and 60 percent for esophageal cancer among those taking aspirin.
Aspirin protected against gastrointestinal cancer the most, particularly for cancer in the upper versus the lower gastric tract. When data from eight studies were pooled, researchers found that cancer deaths among those who took aspirin in doses as low as 75 milligrams a day were 34 percent lower after five years. There was no increase in benefit at doses of aspirin greater than 75 mg daily.
Furthermore, while there has been hesitancy to use aspirin because of bleeding gastric ulcers offsets its ability to prevent strokes and heart attack, now doctors say “the reductions in deaths due to several common cancers will now alter this balance for many people.”
One doctor suggests healthy people could start taking a small 75 mg dose of aspirin every day from the age of about 40 or 45 and continue doing so until they reached around 70 to 75, when the risk of the aspirin causing stomach bleeding rises.
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December 18, 2010: by Bill Sardi
We no longer live in an age of genetic doom — that the sequence of nucleotides on the DNA ladder that we inherited from our forefathers dictates our biological future. Rather we live in an age of epigenetic enlightenment. Our genes can be switched on and off, that is, their ability to produce proteins (called gene expression) can be influenced by diet, temperature, radiation exposure, etc. This is called epigenetics.
In this regard, biologists know that small molecules can enter cellular machinery and alter gene expression and thus produce a pattern of gene activity that produces healthy longevity.
To the surprise of geneticists, there are only 25,000 human genes, with half of these being redundant or inactive genes, which suggests the genome (library of genes) is manipulatable.
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