The Times
by Rhys Blakely

Scientists have said that they may be able to reverse the frailty of old age after using drugs to flush toxic cells from the body for the first time. The trial led researchers closer to a revolution in medicine that could transform the care and treatment of older people with chronic diseases. “It may be possible to delay, prevent and alleviate age-related diseases as a group, instead of going after them one at a time,” James Kirkland, co-author of a paper published in the journal EBioMedicine, said. The trial was carried out at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where nine subjects who had diabetes-related kidney disease were given a mixture of drugs. For three days they received a medicine usually used to treat cancer…

Reach: The Sunday Times has a weekly circulation of more than 655,000 readers and more than 430,000 unique visitors per month online. The Times has a daily circulation of more than 417,000 and more than 880,00 unique visitors per month online.

Context: The presence of senescent or dysfunctional cells can make young mice age faster. And using senolytic drugs in elderly mice to remove these rogue cells can improve health and extend life. These findings from Mayo Clinic researchers and collaborators provide a foundation on which to move forward in this area of aging research. The results appear in Nature Medicine. “We can say with certainty that senescent cells can cause health problems in young mice, including causing physical dysfunction and lowering survival rates, and that the use of senolytics can significantly improve both health span and life span in much older naturally aged animals,” says James Kirkland, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic geriatrics researcher who heads Mayo Clinic’s Kogod Center on Aging. Dr. Kirkland is senior author of the study. You can read more about the research on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Contacts: Bob Nellis, Sharon Theimer

Tags: aging, Dr. James Kirkland, senescent cells, senolytic drugs, The Times, Uncategorized