To slow aging, one study tested exercise and an anti-inflammatory: NPR

there New study It is currently being tested whether age-related diseases can be staved off with a new combination of high-intensity interval training and anti-inflammatory drugs and supplements.

The small study includes healthy older adults, ages 65 to 80, who agreed to try HIIT training, which involves short bouts of cardio, mixed with resistance training. In addition, all participants will take daily capsules of spermidine, a supplement often marketed for healthy aging, as well as a generic medication with powerful anti-inflammatory effects.

“As we age, the immune system shifts away from good inflammation,” the body’s acute, short-term response to ward off injury or infection and promote healing, he explains. Dr. Thomas Maronone of the researchers leading the new study. Maron directs early-stage clinical trials in… Tisch Cancer Institute At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

In contrast, pathogenic inflammation can arise from overactive immune cells that release inflammatory signals after a prolonged response to a bacteria or virus. People also develop chronic inflammation due to aging, which is what happened It has been described as inflammation. “It’s not necessarily that we get more infections as we age, but rather that we become more inflammatory in general, as the immune system weakens. It’s this kind of bad inflammation that underlies the development of many different diseases, from cancer to heart disease to dementia,” Maron says.

“We hope that by reducing this inflammation, we may be able to reduce the incidence of these diseases that become more common with age, and we can further promote healthy aging,” says Maron.

“I’m getting to the age where I’m worried about aging well,” says study participant Robert Provosek, a lawyer in his 70s who says he wants to stay healthy and be as physically active as possible. “I don’t want to get to the point where it takes 10 minutes to cross Park Avenue,” he says.

After a few months of high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, mixed with resistance exercises, Provosek says he could feel the benefits. The workouts take about 15 minutes a day and involve rounds of jumping jacks, with the goal of doing as many as possible in short bursts. “That’s good for me,” he says, noting that he’s pushing himself.

He says that he is not under the illusion that he is guaranteed a long life, and he does not want to reach his 100th birthday if he is not in good health. “But the idea of ​​slowing down aging and expanding your runway is very attractive,” Provosek says.

The goal of the research reflects Provosik’s desires: to stay viable longer. This research comes at a time when it is increasingly possible to reach 100 people. By mid-century, the number of centenarians in the United States had declined. It is expected to quadruple To about 420,000.

Along with this boom, there is an explosion of interest in anti-aging elixirs, everything from supplements, serums, injections and medications. “You can get anything under the sun online,” Maron says. “But I get very anxious when patients come in and ask: Should I take this?” And I say, I have no idea. “There’s no science behind it.”

The study now underway represents a first step toward building evidence for a set of three interventions, each of which has shown some promise.

People who exercise regularly can reduce their risk of developing metabolic diseases, in part because… Anti-inflammatory effects of exercise. Large observational studies have found that women who exercise and strength train reduce their risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 30%, compared to their less active peers.

The researchers chose to add a spermidine supplement to the mix, in light of research showing that spermidine can stimulate autophagy, which is the body’s way of cleaning up damaged cells and reducing inflammation. Our bodies naturally produce spermidine, but as we age, its production decreases significantly, causing its levels to decline. Spermidine supplements have been shown to extend lifespan in preliminary animal studies.

The study includes two generic medications. It will take half of the participants Lamivudinean antiviral drug, and the other half of the participants will take rapamycin, which has long been prescribed to transplant patients to prevent organ rejection.

These two medications have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for decades to treat certain diseases. The question now is whether these drugs will be effective in staving off age-related diseases in healthy older people by reducing inflammation.

Rapamycin has been a hot topic among longevity enthusiasts. “People were taking it, off-label, in very low doses,” says Marrone. In this way, the idea is that it can act as a powerful anti-inflammatory.

As with any medication or nutritional supplement, it is important to weigh the risks and benefits. “There are quite a few side effects that patients can have, and you don’t really know which patients are going to get them,” the researcher says. Philip Eveland from the University of Maryland who wrote a review of Pros and cons of rapamycin For longevity.

Maron’s team will take blood samples from all participants at multiple points throughout the year-long study, and will analyze changes in inflammatory markers using high-resolution technology. Protein analysis. “We’re doing a test that looks at 5,300 different proteins, all of which are cytokines and chemokines,” Maron explains. These are signaling proteins that act like “traffic cops” for immune cells, coordinating the body’s response to infection, injury and inflammation.

The analysis will help researchers map all the proteins in a blood sample to find biomarkers, and will also provide a fuller picture of the immune response, showing how cells and proteins interact during acute or chronic inflammation.

Maron says researchers hope to see a significant reduction in the “bad inflammation” underlying all that ailments that come with aging.

He and his team have now reached the semi-finals In the XPRIZE Healthspan competition. If their initial results are promising, more research will follow. This summer, XPRIZE will announce 10 finalists to share the $10 million grand prize and advance to the finals.

“We are thrilled with the robust and innovative thinking and approaches we are seeing being proposed by these teams,” he says. Jimmy Justice, Executive Vice President at the XPRIZE Foundation and an assistant professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. The goal of the competition is to have researchers develop interventions that can restore muscle, cognitive and immune function for at least 10 years — with a goal of 20 years — and extend healthy lifespan.

“It’s a lunar voyage,” says the researcher. Myriam Muraddirector of the Institute for Precision Immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who is also leading the new study. “We hope to move the needle,” she says, noting its importance “laying the foundation” To extend vitality, not just lifespan.

For Robert Provosek, who is involved in the study, this is the important point. “If you can do something like this system, to increase your vitality, why wouldn’t you do it,” he says.