Body’s biological age might be impacted by medications
Humans have been fighting disease for thousand years, and one of the real cause of the disease is aging. Finding a way to intervene with aging could possibly improve our health or prolong our lifespan.
When we are asked to share our age, we typically think of our chronological age. Biological age is defined as your health condition related to your actual birth year age. It could be impacted by many factors, such as hormonal balance, health conditions, genes, lifestyle habits and more. Your biological age could be older or younger than your chronological age depending on the factors above.
A recent study in Aging Cell shared that patients taking growth hormone, DHEA and metformin experienced around 2.5 years younger biological age on average after the treatment.
The original purpose of the trial was to test whether recombinant human growth hormone could safely and effectively restore the immune response in thymus in people between 51- 65 years old.
In animal research, recombinant human growth hormone showed to have good effect on thymus gland and the immune system. Growth hormone exhibits the side effects like increase the blood glucose level so researchers added metformin and DHEA to prevent this side effect. Some evidence suggested that metformin might also have potential effect of slowing aging in human.
Thymus gland is a very important organ for T cell maturation to be active to fight the pathogens. Thymus gland starts to shrink after the puberty and part is replaced by fat leading the decreasing its effect due to aging.
After one year of treatment, the body image of 7 subjects showed that the thymus fat was replaced with non fat tissue, which is significant to prove that growth hormone has effect on the immune response of thymus gland.
There were some limitations to the study. The trial only tested 9 white male with no placebo group to compare. The article also received some critics from the side effect of the medications (e.g. nephrotoxicity profile of metformin)and question about the applicable population group.
Even though the evidence is not very solid, the potential hope is to learn how to reverse aging, preventing illnesses and prolonging the lifespan. We still need to do a lot more investigation in the future.
For more information please visit Aging Cell.
Questions: Are you surprised by the potential role of medications in prolonging human’s lifespan?What steps do you currently take to enhance your lifestyle and potentially prolongs your lifespan?
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