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AFAR Hosts Media Briefing About "Anti-Aging" Medicine

NEW YORK, June 23, 2004—For thousands of years, human beings have unsuccessfully sought ways to slow, stop, or reverse the aging process. Over the past few decades, in particular, the sales of "anti-aging" medicine have exploded, fueling a multi-billion dollar industry and unleashing a torrent of difficult-to-substantiate claims. Meanwhile, in the quiet laboratories of our nation's top research institutions, scientists are developing an ever more sophisticated understanding of the science of how and why we age. In seeking ways to modify the aging process, there is hype, and there is hope.

On June 23, a number of experts participated in a briefing at the New York Academy of Sciences to discuss these issues. Gina Kolata, science writer with The New York Times, moderated the briefing. The event was co-sponsored by the American Federation for Aging Research, the Ellison Medical Foundation, the National Institute of Aging, and the Gerontological Society of America (GSA).

Funded through a generous educational grant from Pfizer Inc, the briefing coincided with the release of the first of two special issues on these topics in GSA's Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences.

The hype of "anti-aging" medicine
Anti-aging medicine is a curious combination of preventative medicine and diet and exercise, according to S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D., professor, School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago. Traditional preventative medicine, of course, is exactly what all of us should be doing — watching our diets, eating the right foods, and exercising, he says. But it also may include things like hormones, supplements, diagnostic tests - and a great deal of associated exaggeration.

There may be a potential benefit to some of these products, he says, but more importantly, they need to be carefully tested.

"In my view, these products simply should not be used until they are properly evaluated in clinical trials. There are plenty of examples of products that were sold in the past before they were evaluated and then went to clinical trials, and it was subsequently determined that they, indeed, were harmful."

Can we slow the aging process?
Leonard Hayflick, Ph.D., professor of anatomy, University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, points out that "We know of no intervention that will slow, stop, or reverse the aging process in humans.

"I do not expect that intervention in the fundamental aging process will occur in our lifetime — or in the lifetimes of our children," he says.

"Most physicians believe that the greatest risk factor for age-associated disease is the fundamental aging process. Yet research on
this — the greatest risk factor for all of the leading causes of death — is virtually ignored."

Hayflick says that a trivial five percent of the National Institute on Aging research budget is spent on the fundamental biology of aging.

Hope from basic research
Richard Miller, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology and associate director for research, Geriatrics Center, University of Michigan, says we may be closer to a breakthrough in slowing the aging process. Mice and rats that are given 1/3 less to eat than normal (so-called caloric-restriction) are thereby made to age more slowly, he notes — by some estimates 40 to 50 percent more slowly.

Miller tells the story of one research project where normal rats and rats fed a caloric-restricted diet were put in a cage with a jogging wheel.

"Normal rats run maybe a kilometer (.6 mile) every day for a couple of months, and then they do what I do," he says. "They get tired of it and the wheel never turns again.

"Caloric-restricted rats, however, run 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) a day — and I don't mean rat-adjusted kilometers — and they do it until they are very old. Most of the regular rats are dead by 36 months of age. Caloric-restricted rats are still running 5 kilometers a day.

"It's not just that they have a passion for jogging," Miller says. "These animals have a slow rate of developing cataracts, kidney disease, arthritis, and loss of cognitive function."

Miller is convinced. "The aging process can be slowed. These rats are not immortal, but all of the evidence so far, published in peer-reviewed journals, suggests that what you get is a dramatic extension of the period over which the rats are as healthy as I am."

Miller, like Hayflick, also points to the importance of expanding our commitment to research on the fundamental biology of aging. It has, he says, the potential to lead in the medium term to major developments in preventative medicine and in the improvement of public health.

"The old, and still common, assumption that aging is immutable is no longer consistent with the evidence."

The need for continued research on aging
One challenge facing scientists today — noted in the discussion following the panel presentation — is that there are no biomarkers that accurately allow scientists to measure biological age in humans. For this reason, it is impossible to know whether we are modifying the fundamental biology of aging at this time.

Given this theoretical barrier, the participating scientists agree that no "anti-aging" medicine for humans exists today. They are, however, optimistic that we are approaching a much clearer understanding of the aging process — which may lead to such medicine one day.

Olshansky, who is also a senior research associate at the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, argues that slowing the rate of aging remains a critically important goal. "Once you understand the demographics of what's going on across the globe in terms of human aging, you realize that aging has not even hit yet," he says. We know it's going to hit by the year 2011 in most developed countries. And then we are going to see an explosion in people over the age of 65 that we have never seen before.

"I would suggest that we absolutely must go after aging itself," says Olshansky.

"We are pushing many, many more people out into extreme older reaches of the life span, where the risks of frailty and disability are extraordinarily high and growing. In my view, ignoring this challenge is not an option."

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For copies of the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, please contact Todd Kluss at GSA at 202.842.1275 x. 106.

For more information about the basics of aging research, see Infoaging's Biology of Aging information centers at: http://www.infoaging.org/bio-h.html