From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Mon Jul 10 2000 - 11:15:06 MDT
If you read the article, they say it will be "at least" 10 years before
AGE-breakers are approved for use in humans. That can't be right, can it?
Would it be possible to take aminoguanidine with meals to reduce AGE
formation? How much would you take?
hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> There's an article in the current (July) Scientific American which
> presents an entirely different mechanism for age-related damage,
> glycation of tissue proteins. At a minimum it seems there is much
> more to aging than DNA damage...
>
> http://www.sciam.com/2000/0700issue/0700scicit2.html
>
> Anthony Cerami of the Kenneth S. Warren Laboratories in Tarrytown,
> N.Y., suspected some 30 years ago that sugar affects how the body ages,
> based on observations of diabetics, who age rapidly. Sugars are an
> essential source of energy, but once in circulation they can act as
> molecular glue, attaching themselves to the amino groups in tissue
> proteins and cross-linking them into hard yellow-brown compounds
> known as advanced glycation end products, or AGEs.
>
> Indeed, after years of bread, noodles and cakes, human tissues
> inevitably become rigid and yellow with pigmented AGE deposits. For
> the most part, piling on dark pigments in the teeth, bones and
> skin is harmless. But where glucose forms tight bonds with the
> long-lived protein collagen, the result is a constellation of changes,
> including thickened arteries, stiff joints, feeble muscles and failing
> organs--the hallmarks of a frail old age.
>
> ...
>
> Cerami's team showed in the mid-1980s that aminoguanidine could keep
> the tissues of diabetic rats and other old animals as elastic as those
> of young control subjects. It boosted their cardiovascular function
> and improved other age-related disorders. Further studies showed
> that aminoguanidine lowered diabetics' urine albumin--an indicator
> of kidney malfunction--and delayed AGE-related damage to the retina.
>
> ...
>
> A single fountain-of-youth elixir is highly unlikely, says Tamara
> Harris of the National Institute on Aging, because other activities,
> such as free-radical oxidation and possibly telomere shortening,
> also contribute to the body's slow decline. Moreover, AGE-related
> research tends to be slow: Harris points out that there is no easy,
> well-validated way to measure AGE in the body, a shortcoming that
> complicates trials. To Harris, however, AGE breakers remain an
> appealing option. "This is a nice approach because it is multifocal,
> aimed at a basic process that occurs in multiple systems. But,"
> she warns, "there won't be one silver bullet."
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