Studies: Blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice • Hacker News Board

Re: Studies: Blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice

#51

Post by ejstronge » Mon, May 05, 2014, 5:59 AM UTC

garfelnagel wrote: post #45

ejstronge wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an oversimplification - menopause results from decreased levels of hormones that would normally be secreted during the process of egg maturation, among other potential causes [see ref 1]. Further, all the eggs a woman will ever have are created while she is developing in her own mother. This is totally distinct from stem cells, many of which are able to generate new stem cells throughout our lives, albeit at a…

http://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/news/20040...

I dug into this a bit. A good metric by which to measure exciting (and very controversial) papers like the one referenced by that link is to see whether the papers have been replicated by others in well-regarded journals.

While the principal author of that article published an equally-controversial paper in 2005, follow-up studies suggest that there are no newly-generated egg cells in mammals [1]. I think it's fair to say, again, that stem cells don't play a role in maturation of adult egg cells.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23630252

Re: Studies: Blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice

#52

Post by scelerat » Mon, May 05, 2014, 7:01 AM UTC

riggins wrote: post #24

dang wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post substanceless one-liners here. The second one sounds more serious, but "wow time to start talking about the ethics of immortality" doesn't engage with anything in this article; it's simply an immediate leap to something generic and obvious. That is not what HN discussions need.

Please don't post substanceless one-liners here. i.e. don't make jokes. I've wondered about this because I've done the same thing and gotten downvoted. There's nothing about not making jokes in the guidelines. Personally I like a little humor mixed with my HN. Is there some unspoken guideline that HN is supposed to be humorless? And on a semi-serious note, isn't mildly interesting that one of the most common cultural…

> isn't mildly interesting that one of the most common cultural myths (vampires) may have some scientific validity?

That's really all I was commenting on. I could have spelled it out like you did, but clearly my tone was not to some people's liking.

Re: Studies: Blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice

#53

Post by ars » Mon, May 05, 2014, 7:28 AM UTC

tormeh wrote: post #10

User9821 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like it would be relatively easy to test out. People donate blood all the time. I'm sure the effects are known of how much blood you can replace at once without causing issues. Without a doubt some elderly people would volunteer. Why can't we start giving them new blood once a week from donors, and see the results on their health or illnesses? I'm all for testing, but this seems like one of those things you…

Should be done outside the normal blood donor system. There's not that much donor blood around, so it would be unethical to use it. Not a practical problem, but it would look and feel bad. Anyway, yes, why not try this on humans? Sounds perfectly reasonable.

> There's not that much donor blood around, so it would be unethical to use it.

Lots of donated blood expires and is tossed. Make a program that all blood about to expire (1 day away) can be used for this.

Re: Studies: Blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice

#54

Post by adlpz » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:49 PM UTC

doxology wrote: post #48

cpdean wrote: post #17

Details of the procedure: "To do so, they joined rats in pairs by stitching together the skin on their flanks. After this procedure, called parabiosis, blood vessels grew and joined the rats’ circulatory systems. " So the old and new rats were basically sewn together. If you want to see what this looks like, here's a picture: http://www.viewzone.com/regen.miceduo.png

Yet another example of bad science (and it's cruel)... but it makes a great headline, so let's run with it.

How is this bad science? I cannot argue about the cruelty part, as that is a completely subjective qualification (on which I don't agree at all), but if this ends providing results that improve our scientific knowledge and the lives of future generations, I don't believe it can be called bad science.