Medicine for Longer Lifetime
One of the biggest challenges in medicine is developing drugs to extend the lifespan
of people and animals littlesiouxcornprocessors. It’s a challenge posed by our increasing life expectancy, the
ageing of our population, and the increase in age-related disease and disability that
accompanies old age.
There are a range of potential treatments for this problem. Some have been shown
to improve the length of healthy lives in animal models, and others have not.
Longevity has a lot to do with genes littlesiouxcornprocessors.com, the environment and lifestyle. Over the past
few centuries, advances in food and water supply, sanitation and medical care have
dramatically extended the average human lifespan. But these advances haven’t
prevented many of the diseases that cause ageing.
A new class of anti-aging drugs is also emerging. Some are based on a drug that is
used to suppress the immune system in organ transplant recipients, called
rapamycin. In small doses, rapamycin has been shown to prolong the lives of yeast,
worms and mice.
Another candidate is everolimus, a cancer drug made by Novartis, which has been
tested to see if it can boost the immune system in older people. The highest doses
caused fatigue and mouth ulcers, but lower ones had no adverse effects.
Some of the compounds that are being investigated have been shown to reduce a
protein called mTOR, which controls how cells use energy in the body. Inhibiting
mTOR may help slow ageing and possibly prevent the onset of diseases such as
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
The promise of these longevity drugs has led to a rush of new research in the field.
But so far, the majority of research is focused on treating chronic disease with a
much smaller focus on prevention.
If we could develop a drug that gave healthy people an extra 10 years of life, that
would be a game changer. But that doesn’t happen very often, because of the high
cost and time it takes to test drugs.
To get to this point, there needs to be a shift in the priorities of the medical research
community. Instead of tackling the causes of death, such as cancer and heart
disease, the focus should be on developing drugs that can extend healthspan, or the
number of years a person is able to function well without illness.
This strategy is supported by a growing body of evidence, including some very
promising results from experiments in worms and yeast. These findings suggest that
by inhibiting mTOR, we can extend the lifespan of mice and worms, as well as
increase their overall health.
However, this approach will have to be carefully managed as there are likely to be
many side effects, including more years of ill health and disability in older people.
This is why many researchers advocate a managed compression of morbidity, in
which we focus on extending life while avoiding the development of chronic illnesses
such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.
The search for an effective anti-aging drug will likely involve a mix of clinical trials
and research in the laboratory, as well as testing the effects on human populations.
This approach could help to overcome some of the problems associated with anti-
aging drugs, such as safety and side effects, but it will also require a more
comprehensive understanding of the biology of aging, so that we can predict which
substances and combinations will be successful at improving lifespan.