Young blood for an old heart
Scientists were able to rejuvenate the mouse heart
American researchers have managed to isolate a blood protein that restores youth to the heart muscle of old mice, making it soft and thin. Scientists hope that their discovery will help in the treatment of age-related heart diseases, in particular, heart failure. The researchers' article was published in the journal Cell (Loffredo et al., Growth Differentiation Factor 11 Is a Circulating Factor that Reverses Age-Related Cardiac Hypertrophy).
A protein called GDF11 (growth and differentiation factor 11) circulates in large quantities in the bloodstream of young mice, but with age its concentration begins to decrease. With age, the heart muscle also ages, it "wears out", becomes stiffer and relaxes worse between contractions. The walls of the heart also thicken – this phenomenon is called hypertrophy. As a result of all these changes, the heart no longer pumps blood so efficiently, and it begins to stagnate in the lungs, which causes shortness of breath in the elderly.
Researchers from Harvard University have combined the circulatory system of young and old mice using a unique technique. The blood of a young mouse entered the circulatory system of an old mouse for 4 weeks, after which its heart began to decrease in size and outwardly began to resemble the heart of a young rodent more and more. After that, the researchers conducted a protein screening of the blood of a young mouse and found out that it is the GDF11 protein that prevents the aging of the heart muscle.
Then they injected this protein into old mice in such an amount that its concentration equaled that in the blood of young mice, and made sure that the muscle wall of the heart of old mice began to become thinner, and the heart began to shrink in size.
However, researchers do not yet guarantee that exposure to protein improves not only the appearance, but also the functioning of the heart. It is also not yet known whether the protein increases the lifespan of old mice. If this turns out to be the case, the discovery of scientists can play an important role in the development of fundamentally new methods of treating age-related heart failure.
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15.05.2013