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To study how the experimental method worked, the participants were placed in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber for five 90-minute sessions per week for three months. The result: Some of the telomeres in their cells were stretched by up to 20%. It’s a bewildering claim: a reversal process that many other researchers have attempted in the past, to no avail. However, it should be considered that the study concerns a small sample of individuals and that the results still need to be reproduced by other teams before being validated. The study was published in the journal Aging.
However, the fact that hyperbaric oxygen therapy appears to affect telomere length is a finding that deserves further study. Lead researcher Shair Efrati, PhD at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience, explained how they drew inspiration for the experiment.
Inspiration from space
” After the NASA twin experiment, in which one of the twins was sent to space and the other remained on Earth, demonstrated a significant difference in the length of their telomeres, we realized that changes in external environment can affect the central cellular changes that occur during aging Efrati said.
Telomeres repeat bits of genetic code that act like the DNA equivalent of the piece of plastic or metal that covers the end of a shoelace. They copy each other with the rest of the chromosomes every time a cell divides (mitosis). However, with each replica, small snippets of code from the last part of the sequence fail to form the new copy, leaving the newly copied chromosome a little shorter than its predecessor.
” As anyone who has lost the lace “hood” knows, it doesn’t take long for the lace to lose its integrity. Likewise, shorter telomeres place sequences further down the chromosome, increasing the risk of dangerous mutations. », Efrati explains.
These mutations coincide with changes that predispose us to a number of age-related conditions, including diseases such as cancer. This doesn’t necessarily mean we’re aging because our telomeres are shrinking, but there is a link between telomere length and overall health, which the researchers want to study further.
” There is a correlation between longer telomeres and better cellular performance Efriti adds. There are many ways to accelerate the erosion of our telomeres. Not getting enough sleep, for example, as well as consuming too many processed foods and possibly even having children (for women). Slowing down this loss therefore requires efforts, such as exercising regularly and eating healthy.
But the real challenge would be to completely transform our chromosomal hourglass, and “recovering” the lost telomere sections could be a good place to start. The fact that the tissues that line our gut do it naturally using an enzyme called telomerase has fueled research over the years. Attempts to accomplish this task have been marked by many promising studies. For example, a gene therapy experiment in mice showed that it might someday be feasible in humans. More recently, the stem cells of a 100-year-old woman underwent a complete telomere restoration following “cellular reprogramming”.
20% rejuvenated telomeres
Some studies have shown that it is possible to obtain very small increases, of the order of a small percentage, thanks in particular to food supplements such as vitamin D. But while on the market there are already many hypothetical promises to reverse aging in beings humans, the reality of the rejuvenating therapies available is far below these expectations.
This is why this new study is attracting so much attention. Far from the few percentages mentioned above, the researchers report here that the telomeres of white blood cells taken from the 26 subjects had recovered about a fifth of their lost length, a gain of about 20%.
To achieve this, they relied exclusively on hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) – the absorption of pure oxygen while sitting in a pressurized chamber for long periods of time; in this case five 90-minute weekly sessions, for a total of three months.
It should be noted that this method has generated controversy in the past, as some have claimed that it could treat a whole range of diseases. This is usually the type of therapy offered to a diver who comes too fast from the depths of the ocean, or to eliminate some oxygen-sensitive bacteria in the case of some difficult-to-treat wounds. But oxygen-rich environments also create a strange paradox, in which the body desperately induces a series of genetic and molecular changes that typically occur in an oxygen-poor environment.
In this study, the researchers were able to show that HBOT-induced genetic changes extended telomeres and also had a potentially positive effect on tissue health. A slightly reduced sample of volunteers also showed a significant decrease in the number of senescent T cells, tissues that are a vital part of our immune system’s targeted response against invaders.
” Now that we have demonstrated the opposite effect of aging on the cohort studied using the default HBOT protocol, further studies will be needed to optimize the specific protocol for each individual. Efrati said.
In a press release from the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research, Efrati says that understanding telomere shortening is “considered the ‘Holy Grail’ of the biology of aging.” As much as telomere shortening appears to be important in the biological mechanism of aging, it is certainly only a small part of the mystery. However, this study is very encouraging to understand at least one of the mechanisms involved and perhaps already developing therapies for rejuvenation or the fight against some forms of cancer.
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