Two
teams of scientists found that blood from young mice reverses aging
in old mice, by rejuvenating their muscles and brains. Clive McCay of
Cornell University tested the theory by
transferring the blood of young rats into old ones. After this
procedure,they noticed blood vessels grew and joined the rats’ circulatory
systems. The blood from the young rat was transfered into the old one, and
vice versa. Later, McCay performed necropsies and found that the
cartilage of the old rats looked more youthful than it would have
otherwise. But the scientists couldn't say how the transformations
happened.
At
Stanford, researchers were investigating whether the blood of young
mice altered the brains of old mice. Saul Villeda and his colleagues proved it was true. When old mice received young blood, they had a
burst of new neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that
is important for forming memories.
Link
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/257885891.html
NOS Themes
Science is collaborative: Many different scientist worked together to test the rats.
Science is based of evidence: The scientists proved their theory by testing an experiment and collecting evidence.
Very Interesting! I saw this same story on the news this morning. They mentioned how the proteins in the blood are more concentrated and more able to do there job. They also mentioned how lots of trials tested in rats do not seem to give similar results in humans. Human clinical trials will begin later this year the story said.
ReplyDeleteI did some more research on this topic, and I thought the way the scientists tested the mice was very cool. They would inject the blood found young mice into older mice, and they found the older mice could run twice as long on a treadmill and had more branching blood vessels in their brains. The scientists injected a protein that is thought to rejuvenate the heart also, and the older mice that were injected could run much longer on the treadmill. There is a lot of previous research to back up this data, and you can read more about it at this website:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bostonglobe.com/news/science/2014/05/04/blood-from-young-mice-reverses-aging-brain-muscles/iepDMMf7wrLJy6WgXqpdIJ/story.html