Old Stems Cells Young Again — Via Vampirism 109
pdragon04 writes to tell us that in recent tests a Howard Hughes Medical Institute team has found that through exposure to "young" blood cells, bone marrow stem cells start to act young again as well. "The researchers have not yet isolated the blood-borne factors that can switch old stem cells back to a more youthful state, but their results are consistent with other recent studies that show stem-cell aging may be reversible. Together those results suggest that it might one day be possible to boost the practical lifespan of stem cells, and thereby increase the body’s resistance to disease and age-related degeneration."
Paging Dr. Bathory... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, going just by the summary, the marrow has to be exposed to the young blood cells. Now I doubt they would survive the digestion process very well, so you probably have to drain their blood and IV it like a heroin junkie while it's still fresh. Or even worse drill or punch a hole in your bone to shoot it directly into the marrow.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll live forever if I eat babies?
It's a little more complicated than that. From the article:
To see if younger blood could reverse the sluggishness of aging blood cells, the researchers began by surgically joining the bloodstreams of pairs of mice that were of different ages, but nearly clones of one another.
So not eat, but perhaps get transfusions from a much younger sibling. It would probably have to be the same blood type. Simply sucking the blood of random babies is unlikely to be effective and won't be appreciated by their parents or society, so probably best not to.