I AM RETIRED (for many years) and in excellent health today, but I worry about the future. I am not necessarily afraid of dying, but I do not want to be sick and in pain as I grow older.
Some scientists are into an emerging field called geroscience. By addressing the root causes of aging, they hope to avoid the disability and diseases that can make old age so terrible. They want to help people feel healthy for longer, compressing the years of illness that often accompany old age into a much shorter period. They want to make a medicine that would be safe enough for someone in midlife to take almost like a supplement (like a daily vitamin) but with much more profound biological effects.
These potential medicines are not antiaging therapies. That term is associated with an industry that is trying to sell products to the gullible public. The antiaging market includes everything from face creams meant to remove wrinkles to pills that promise to turn back the clock. Geroscientists instead are doing legitimate research to find medicines that can slow the aging process.
But whether developing such drugs is even possible remains to be seen. Getting the medicines to market means securing more funding, overcoming obstacles related to study design and combating near constant hype.
How did geroscience begin? The advent of modern medicine and public health has more than doubled the average human life span — from about 30 in the early 1800s to more than 70 today. This is perhaps one of the biggest things that has happened to mankind.
But there is a downside. We’re living long enough to see the frailty and illness that comes with old age. Cells stop dividing, DNA degrades, the immune system falters. We become increasingly vulnerable to diseases. Many of us spend our last decades beset by medical maladies — broken bones, weakness, dementia, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and more.
For decades, scientists thought the gradual decline that comes with old age was unavoidable. But experiments in the 1980s and ’90s suggested that the process might not be so fixed.
In one noteworthy experiment, a molecular biologist and colleagues found that mutations in a single gene in the roundworm could double its life span. Typical 13-day-old worms barely moved. The mutant worms moved as if they were much younger, and they lived longer too.
For researchers interested in human health, this and similar findings from other teams led to a profound realization. Perhaps the aging process is malleable. If so, scientists might be able to develop therapies to attack the root of aging rather than simply combating the pileup of diseases.
Though there are no proven therapies for people yet, geroscientists are looking at several compounds that can slow the aging process, at least in worms, fruit flies and mice. Some have already been tested in humans, and many more clinical trials are under way. There’s hope for us old folks! By Manny Palomar, PhD (EV Mail December 9-15, 2024 issue)
