New discovery of scientists from Harvard Medical school offers a promising approach to combat aging in muscles. Dr. Comes and colleagues revealed the mechanisms of mitochondrial aging:
"Ever since eukaryotes subsumed the bacterial ancestor of mitochondria, the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes have had to closely coordinate their activities, as each encode different subunits of the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system. Mitochondrial dysfunction is a hallmark of aging, but its causes are debated. We show that, during aging, there is a specific loss of mitochondrial, but not nuclear, encoded OXPHOS subunits. We trace the cause to an alternate PGC-1α/β-independent pathway of nuclear-mitochondrial communication that is induced by a decline in nuclear NAD+ and the accumulation of HIF-1α under normoxic conditions, with parallels to Warburg reprogramming. Deleting SIRT1 accelerates this process, whereas raising NAD+ levels in old mice restores mitochondrial function to that of a young mouse in a SIRT1-dependent manner. Thus, a pseudohypoxic state that disrupts PGC-1α/β-independent nuclear-mitochondrial communication contributes to the decline in mitochondrial function with age, a process that is apparently reversible."
The scientist also conducted an experiment on rats during which they supplied the animals with NAD. The results were absolutely amazing: one week treatment lead to reverse of biological age of the rats' muscles from 24 months to 6 months. It is the same if muscles of 60 years old men become as young as muscles of 20 years old person!!!
Just amazing! I am waiting for clinical studies of this approach!
Source: CELL
An interesting discovery indeed!
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