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http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/a-puzzling-fuller...
The average life span of the Wistar rats used is 2-3 years (24 - 36 months). This was a small study size, but that's no so important in determining whether you have an actual means of life extension if you can show that any of your study group lived much longer than usual - but it is important when it comes to the degree of life extension. If the study group is small, as it is here, using only a handful of rats, then the size of the effect can be much more readily distorted by chance. This line in the paper jumped out at me: "Before C60 administration, the rats were fasted overnight but with access to water." If they failed to fast the control group, then we're looking at yet another study that failed to control for calorie restriction, and this is actually largely an intermittent fasting study - which has certainly been shown to extend life in rats.
This would explain how the olive oil administration also apparently extended life significantly...
What I'd really like to see is a duplication with a larger sample size and some sort of blind setup with the people caring for the rats. And even then, there are good reasons to expect that this won't carry over to humans, given that humans already live so long for an animal of our body size.
at the risk of sounding strange, is this or anything similar available to buy anywhere?
It is being produced for research purposes, so I guess you could ask at your local university lab where they sourced it. But caution is in order: the experiment described in the article was intended to find out about the toxicity of BF C60. Given that many of its chemically-similar relatives are indeed highly toxic, it's probably not a good idea to ingest this stuff yet. Six rats don't prove this substance is harmles…
So what might be going on here? http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/a-puzzling-fuller... The average life span of the Wistar rats used is 2-3 years (24 - 36 months). This was a small study size, but that's no so important in determining whether you have an actual means of life extension if you can show that any of your study group lived much longer than usual - but it is important when it comes to the degree o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is being produced for research purposes, so I guess you could ask at your local university lab where they sourced it. But caution is in order: the experiment described in the article was intended to find out about the toxicity of BF C60. Given that many of its chemically-similar relatives are indeed highly toxic, it's probably not a good idea to ingest this stuff yet. Six rats don't prove this substance is harmles…
Just curious, what are it's chemically similar relatives? I'm no chemist, but I thought the only thing remotely similar to c60 is graphite (which is harmless).
Some fullerene compound substances are toxic, but the C60 pure fullerene seems to be OK so far. Still, I wouldn't bet my life on it. If, for example, the C60 bucky would have a toxicity mechanism comparable to carbon nanotubes, that may be damage unlikely to show up during the limited lifetime of a rat - but it may well be much more relevant to humans who live 30 times as long!
This doubles median lifespan, not absolute lifespan, it's still impressive but would be much more so if it was doubling max lifespan. edit: Checked the data, interestingly there's a fairly wide range of death in the non-buckyball population (more than 1 year) but the buckyball population all died within 3 months, oddly enough none of the groups overlap, the data looks almost perfect. Will be interesting to see what t…
The median is more robust than the average, and the average that is more robust than the maximal or minimal. * One strange case/rat can modify the maximal or minimal a lot (For example, some kill a rat with a gun or you are "lucky" and get a Methuselah rat.) * A strange event also can modify the average a lot (If someone kill a rat immediately at the beginning of the experiment, the "new" average is approximately (n-…