Rejuvenation of the membranes of aging nerves: and here young blood will help
Nerve repair with the help of young blood is open
Leonid Popov, Membrane
Some effects of aging in the central nervous system of animals can be reversed when exposed to the blood flow of a young individual. Biologists from the University of Cambridge suggest that the open phenomenon in some form can be used in therapy and in humans.
The authors of the study conducted an experiment with old rodents whose myelin sheaths of nerve fibers were damaged and the remyelination process was bad (University of Cambridge, Proof of principle study suggests the age-associated decline of the remyelination process is reversible).
Thickness of the myelin sheath (shown in pink)
directly affects the efficiency of nerve cells
(photo by ScienceIllustrated/flickr.com).
A decrease in the ability to regenerate the protective sheath of nerves is observed in elderly people or with multiple sclerosis. At the same time, nerve fibers first begin to conduct signals poorly, and then they are completely lost.
In the experiment, biologists connected the blood flow of an old and a young animal. At the same time, as it turned out, monocytes from young individuals reactivated their own stem cells in old animals and these stem cells acquired the ability to synthesize myelin.
In addition, macrophages from young mice were collected at sites of myelin damage on the nerves of old individuals. White blood cells destroyed bacteria and removed "garbage", in particular, destroyed myelin.
Such cleaning of the repair site also contributed to the accelerated recovery of nerve sheaths. As a result, remyelination in elderly rodents began to go as well as it does in young animals.
It turns out that young monocytes are able to awaken their own repair resources of an elderly or sick organism. And this may turn out to be a more effective way of healing than therapy with a stem cell transplant from a donor.
Details of the work can be found in the article in Cell Stem Cell: Ruckh et al., Rejuvenation of Regeneration in the Aging Central Nervous System.
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17.01.2012