Scientists May Have Found How To Reverse Brain Aging – BGR



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  • A Stanford team has discovered how to reverse brain aging and restore mental acuity, a breakthrough that could one day lead to drugs that treat medical conditions and cognitive decline.
  • Researchers have found a way to block the inflammation responsible for the cognitive decline that accompanies aging.
  • By using drugs designed to block the link between a specific hormone and a receptor, the researchers restored normal function to immune cells that break down with age.
  • They observed that mice treated with the drug regained their memory and spatial orientation abilities, performing just as well as younger animals in similar tests.

The aging process is a risk factor in most medical conditions. The older the body and mind, the harder it is to do most things, including fighting an infection like the novel coronavirus. But several teams of researchers are studying various ways of slowing down aging, reversing aging or degrading certain organs. In the latter category are researchers at Stanford, who may have found how to reverse brain aging.

It turns out that the immune system is at least partly responsible for the aging of the brain. Scientists have discovered a process to reverse mental aging in mice, and the experiments also worked on human cells in lab tests. However, these are only the first steps towards creating drugs that could one day be used to prevent medical conditions associated with cognitive decline.

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Dr Katrin Andreasson’s team published a study in Nature describing their initial work for the aging brain. As Stanford Medicine explains, biologists have long speculated that inflammation may be responsible for the aging process. Reducing it could slow the onset of certain conditions such as loss of mental acuity, or even prevent the conditions altogether. Andreasson’s team may have discovered what causes certain immune cells to promote inflammatory processes inside the body and how to prevent them.

The team found that a type of immune cell called myeloid cells (like macrophages) overdrive as they get older, causing inflammation inside tissues, including the brain. Myeloid cells are supposed to clean up debris, supply nutrients to other cells, and monitor pathogens. But as they get older, they start to behave badly and this damages nearby tissues.

The researchers found that blocking the interaction of a specific hormone (PGE2) and a receptor (EP2) is enough to “restore the juvenile metabolism and placid temperament of mouse and human myeloid cells in a dish and in live mice ”. The experimental drugs were able to reverse cognitive decline in mice, restoring memory and navigation skills to levels comparable to young mice.

“If you adjust the immune system, you can reduce brain aging,” Andreasson said Stanford Medicine.

The problem with the PGE2-EP2 link is “a double whammy”. Myeloid cells, like macrophages, produce more PGE2 than younger ones, and they have more EP2 receptors on their surface. This leads to an increase in the processes that lead to local inflammation. EP2 is found on immune cells, including myeloid cells, and it can trigger inflammatory activity inside cells after binding to PGE2.

Andreasson’s team tried two experimental drugs that blocked the PGE2-EP2 link. This caused the older myeloid cells to behave like the younger versions, reversing their inflammatory activities in lab tests with incubated mice and human macrophages. As for live mice, older subjects who received the drugs performed equally well on recall and spatial navigation tests as younger mice, indicating that the drugs may reduce brain aging. One of the drugs was effective even if it did not penetrate the blood-brain barrier.

While this research looks promising, the team is far from near clinical trials for drugs that could slow or reverse conditions such as dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Andreasson said neither of the two test drugs could be used on humans, citing potential toxic side effects. But the study could lead to different compounds that may be safe for human testing in the future, and could potentially help prevent cognitive decline after a certain age.

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Chris Smith started writing about gadgets as a hobby, and before he even knew it he was sharing his take on tech with readers around the world. Whenever he doesn’t write about gadgets, he miserably fails to walk away from them, although he desperately tries. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.



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