



Age-old question: boffins find way to manipulate lifespan of mice by targeting hypothalamus

<em>Illustration: Cathy Wilcox</em>

Illustration: Cathy Wilcox



The research, published in the journal Nature, implicates the hypothalamus - a brain region that regulates growth, reproduction and metabolism - in the gradual and co-ordinated bodily deterioration we call ageing.


The team said they could speed up or slow down ageing in mice by activating or inhibiting the brain-signalling molecule NF-kB in the hypothalamus, which in turn affects levels of a hormone called GnRH that plays a role in the generation of neurons - the data processing cells of the brain.

By stimulating NF-kB, they caused a decline in GnRH which led to impaired neurogenesis and ageing symptoms such as muscle weakening, skin atrophy, bone loss and memory impairment.

NF-kB is generally responsible for regulating the body's response to inflammation, the New York-based team wrote in their research. The researchers could also slow ageing in mice by giving them the GnRH hormone.

''Our study provided interventional strategies to slow down ageing through targeting the hypothalamus,'' said the study's senior author, Dongsheng Cai, professor of molecular pharmacology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

''It can help to slow down ageing, which is already a big breakthrough, as it can counteract against many ageing-related diseases,'' he said, while stipulating: ''I don't think ageing could be completely stopped.''

Professor Cai said he believed the mouse results would translate into humans ''though it will need future efforts to develop safe and applicable approaches to humans''.

Commenting on the research, Harvard Medical School experts Dana Gabuzda and Bruce Yankner said the results, if validated, may have important implications for treatment of age-related diseases - particularly those linked to inflammation ''The idea also raises the intriguing possibility that hypothalamic regulation could be therapeutically manipulated to have broad effects on the ageing process,'' they wrote in Nature.


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