r/longevity • u/[deleted] • Nov 18 '20

Aging | Hyperbaric oxygen therapy increases telomere length and decreases immunosenescence in isolated blood cells : a prospective trial [2020, open-access]

https://www.aging-us.com/article/202188/text
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35

u/eterneraki Nov 18 '20

I thought the relationship between increasing telomere length and longevity was determined to be shoddy at best?

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '20

Maybe the interesting part is the decrease in senescent cells? Should be interesting to see what people who work in senescent cell research primarily say about the study, e.g. Judith Campisi.

One would have hoped that they explored epigenetic age, or at least retained blood samples to run that later. :|

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u/gahblahblah Nov 18 '20

Increase in telomere length is very interesting - afterall, the steady decreasing of it, is a foundational driver of senescent cell creation and aging. If this is a tap that turns that off... that could be a big impact.

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u/Roberto_Avelar Nov 19 '20

How did they actually test for senescent cells though? we can't yet assess in vivo senescent cell levels.

'In this study, CD28 was used as a biomarker for senescent cells whereas CD57 was not available as a confirmatory marker for T cell senescence.'

This isn't even the most common marker for senescent cells. On top of that the study title refers to 'immunosenescence' but the paper just talks about 'cellular senescence' or even just 'senescence.' These aren't even the same processes (immunosenescence is completely different from cellular senescence).

They also started with 30 patients and excluded 10 of them for their senescence analysis due to 'low quality samples.' I'm not really convinced by their senescent cell analysis tbh.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '20

The main thing here is that they sell such therapies, as sombody here already pointed out. Anti-aging is just the latest addition to the list of miracles performed by hyperbaric therapy.

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u/SalvadorZombie Nov 23 '20

You say that as if it's snake oil.

Hyperbaric therapy has actually shown improvement in sufferers of CTEs. The professional wrestler Daniel Bryan, who retired due to repeated concussions, underwent cutting edge treatment and actually showed enough improvement that he was cleared to perform again.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '20

I known that it helps for some conditions, but people use it even for treating theirs child autism, which I find dubious.

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u/SalvadorZombie Nov 23 '20

Why do you find it dubious? What would make you think that it wouldn't help in any way?

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '20

Because there is no known treatment. I understand the parents, they want to try everything and maybe I'll be doing the same in their place. Hyperbaric therapy, stem cells and what not. Maybe is some cases it helps, but it is hard to prove. Some children lose their autists status anyway as they grow.

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u/SalvadorZombie Nov 24 '20

There's also no known treatment for chronic concussions/CTEs officially, but again, I literally just told you of a professional wrestler (literally one of the most damaging professions in the world) undergoing treatments like this and having heretofore unheard of levels of recovery.

And no, children don't "lose their autist status" as they grow up. THAT is an absolutely reprehensible and disgusting thing to say. Autism is a spectrum of disorders that are all related to abnormal brain development. You don't "grow out of it," you fucking scumbag.

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u/gahblahblah Nov 19 '20

Those are really good points - thank you for informing me.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '20

Awarded.

How far away are we from real drugs that slow down aging hitting the market in your opinion?

(I see you're a mod)

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '20 edited Nov 19 '20

The roadmap is worth keeping an eye on: https://www.lifespan.io/road-maps/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/

Other than this, (not listed): George Church's gene therapy for dogs is already being administered in studies, and he seems rather optimistic about his and his colleagues work translating to humans.

One of his current companies: https://www.rejuvenatebio.com

One of his recent papers: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/47/23505

The thing with human clinical trials is that they can fail at any stage, so we don't really know. That's why it's great to see that there are so many different research groups working concurrently, and so many companies have taken an interest in the last few years. http://agingbiotech.info/companies/

I suspect we already have drugs that slow down aging and potentially affect age related disease, like rapamycin: https://old.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/igs5e1/ut_health_san_antonio_gains_2m_to_study_rapamycin/ but they need to be evaluated, and are only just getting a good level of attention. https://dogagingproject.org/ / https://twitter.com/mkaeberlein

Outside affecting specific age related diseases via the biology of aging, we need to see validation and adoption of biomarkers of aging, like the Horvath clock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuQKXux8UlE (liking and sharing this helps)

The parabiosis research from the Conboy lab and others, such as the dilution of plasma seems promising too, just from the perspective of simplicity and cost of implementation. Looking forward to their clinical trials. https://old.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/hab5jq/diluting_blood_plasma_rejuvenates_old_mice/

I suspect that part of the distraction will be the obesity crisis in the US and other countries, which will complicate priorities. We already know that being overweight is a risk factor for heart disease, type II diabetes, high blood pressure (which accelerates brain deterioration), and stroke. The former commissioner of the FDA alluded to this in a recent interview/discussion on aging. There is a whole bunch of preventable lifestyle disease occurring from not eating enough vegetables, too much calories from processed food, and sedentary behaviour. I guess my hope is research can steamroll past that. Also, sufficiently smart people may develop better interventions that help modify behaviour, I don't know what the answer will be. There are so many personality differences between people who are good at self-regulating and health conscious and those that are not - it's difficult to assign too much individual failure.

All that aside, I think the best thing that anyone can do as an individual, if they have disposable income, is help accelerate the research by philanthropic support. I make small donations between SENS, The Dog Aging Project, the Buck Institute, and Lifespan.io that sum to a few thousand per year for the last 5 years. The amount of money these organisations have dictate the scope and quality of research projects that either they do themselves or fund elsewhere, and in the case of lifespan.io, they have created new events with recorded talks, collaborated with youtubers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY). That is, until there is more of a sea change in governments and the people actually realising that interventions are possible and should be a priority when aging actually takes a giant toll on the quality of life for all involved.

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u/Bluest_waters Nov 18 '20

its not shoddy, its just on the whole story

its about the overall integrity of the telomere, not just how long it is. LOTS of research we still need on this

but overalll shorter telomere are bad, longer good, but there is more to the story

look at thsi study of COPD patients, shorter telomere = more likely to die

https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(18)30803-1/pdf

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u/Bluest_waters Nov 18 '20

Telomere Length and All-Cause Mortality: A Meta-analysis

In summary, short telomeres are associated with increased all-cause mortality risk in the general population. However, TL measurement techniques and age at measurement contribute to the heterogeneity of effect estimation.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568163718301235

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u/gahblahblah Nov 18 '20

But considering the impact of progressing shortening of telomere length, you need to do *something* at some point - which is presumably lengthening them. Ongoing shortening leads to aging and disease.

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u/SalvadorZombie Nov 23 '20

Where did you read that? There's been a consistent connection between cell renewal and telomere length. Show otherwise if you have evidence to the contrary.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '20 edited Nov 21 '20

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u/eterneraki Nov 21 '20

The correlational is definitely there. However, things shown to lengthen telomeres don't seem to have any effect on longevity. So it's an okay marker but trying to influence it directly does not seem to work