“Exercise is one of the most powerful and best studied ways to protect the brain from age-related cognitive declineIn fact, it is becoming clearer every day that it plays a very important role in preventing neurodegenerative risks (from Alzheimer’s to a good number of rare congenital dementias). The problem is that not all older adults cannot exercise regularly. .
But what if it wasn’t necessary? A team of researchers from Eli & Edythe Broad Center for Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research from University of California San Francisco Have been found with a curious phenomenon that could answer this question in an extremely curious way: that, at least in mice, blood plasma transmits the restorative effects of exercise to the brain of elderly and sedentary subjects.
How is it possible? How does it work?
Gabrielle Rocha Rios —
The idea is not new. Many researchers have sought therapies that can confer some of the same neurological benefits in people with low levels of physical activity.. However, the poor understanding of the mechanisms by which exercise is neuroprotective have turned all these attempts into a dead end. Now the thing has changed.
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The study just published in Science shows that, after exercise, the livers of the mice secrete a protein called Gpld1 and that high levels of this protein (in blood) correlate with better cognitive function in elderly mice. On the other hand, they have discovered that the same enzyme is also found in elevated levels in the blood of older humans who exercise regularly.
Finding this, there was only one more question left to close the circle: checking that increasing the amount of Gpld1 produced by the liver could confer many of the same brain benefits as regular exercise without the need to do it. Why? Because, as the UCSF professor pointed out Saul Villeda, that means the door could be opened to create a pill that produced the same brain benefits as exercise.
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The question about the pill is not a joke. Researchers have already shown that the biological factors present in the blood of young mice can rejuvenate the brains of aging mice. Likewise, factors in the blood of older mice can cause premature age-related cognitive decline in young mice. The weak point is that, no matter how vampiric we want to get, blood plasma is not a very comfortable and versatile therapy.
Hence the interesting thing about this study is that “suggests that at least some of these benefits may one day be available as a drugNow the most difficult part is finding that medicine. Although, on such a potentially lucrative topic, we can expect that as we speak, there are already many teams working on it. Time to time.
Image | Anupam Mahapatra
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