Resveratrol is rehabilitated – wait for the "old age pills"
Pharmaceutical giant GSK has promised pills to prolong life
The new drugs are synthetic versions of resveratrol, a compound found in red wine that has a number of positive effects, including slowing aging.
Long-term studies of resveratrol have shown that the biological effects of the substance are due to the activity of the SIRT1 gene. It encodes an enzyme from the family of sirtuins that regulate many key functions of the body, including those responsible for biological aging.
GSK has tested more than a hundred synthetic resveratrol analogues on individual patients with various diseases, such as cancer, diabetes and heart failure. The results of these limited trials have shown that targeted action on a single enzyme associated with slowing down the aging process can be effective for the prevention of age-related diseases.
The mechanism of action on the enzyme encoded by the SIRT1 gene for each of the 117 experimental drugs was the same, which indicates the discovery of a whole class of anti-aging drugs that can prevent the development of cancer, Alzheimer's disease and type 2 diabetes. These synthetic resveratrol variants were selected for human trials from four thousand synthetic activators of the SIRT1 gene, which acted 100 times stronger than resveratrol contained in one glass of red wine.
Limited trials have been conducted on patients with type 2 diabetes and psoriasis. In the first group, there was an improvement in metabolism, in the second – a decrease in redness of the skin. The drugs were given both orally and applied topically.
According to David Sinclair, the head of the study and lead author of an article published in Science on the results of trials (Hubbard et al., Evidence for a Common Mechanism of SIRT1 Regulation by Allosteric Activators), the first drug to be commercialized for the treatment of diabetes. According to him, "synthetic resveratrol imitates the benefits of diet and exercise, but does not affect the patient's weight."
The scientist suggests that drugs based on synthetic resveratrol can be recommended as preventive drugs by analogy with statins, which are prescribed to prevent cardiovascular diseases.
In animal trials, overweight mice given synthetic resveratrol ran twice as fast as skinny mice, and their life expectancy was 15 percent longer.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru12.03.2013