London - Dracula was on to something. Scientists have used a dose of young blood to rejuvenate ageing hearts.
The vampire-like treatment reversed the life-threatening thickening and stiffening of the heart that occurs with age.
The work was done on mice but the researchers believe it will lead to the first drug to mend ailing hearts.
The researchers at Harvard Medical School in the US began by “sewing together” two mice of different ages, which allowed young blood to flow into the older animal’s body.
Within four weeks, the heart of the older animal went from being stiff and struggling to fill with blood to resembling that of the much younger creature.
The team then spent months trying to identify the revitalising component of the young blood and eventually hit upon a hormone called GDF-11. Levels of this hormone fall with age. Giving old mice jabs of the hormone helped rejuvenate their hearts, the journal Cell reports.
Similar experiments, in which the circulatory systems of two mice have been connected, have given old brains a new lease of life.The researchers proposed giving people in middle-age regular jabs of blood drawn from people in their 20s.
However, the Harvard team don’t have such a radical approach. Their plan is to give GDF-11 as a drug and hope to test it on patients in four to five years.
Dr Shannon Amoils, of the British Heart Foundation, said the study was “intriguing”, but said it will not help tackle heart failure caused by heart attacks and disease – the most common form of the condition. - Daily Mail