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Chinese scientists claim to find new life for old in the blood of the young

  • Study finds anti-ageing component that can be extracted from bodily fluids to extend life of laboratory mice
  • Researchers said the findings are a ‘starting point’ with many scientific questions still to be answered

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Hopes of developing an anti-ageing therapy based on a component found in young blood has attracted controversy in China, but the research team says its study is only a starting point. Photo: AFP
Dannie Peng
Chinese scientists say they have isolated an anti-ageing component in the blood of young mice, with the longest surviving mouse in their study living for up to 1,266 days – equivalent to 120-130 human years.
The researchers said their findings may offer hope in the human battle against age-related diseases and improve lifelong health, but stressed that the study was only a starting point, with many scientific questions still to be answered.

According to the peer-reviewed study published by the journal Nature Ageing on April 16, male mice aged 20 months, with a typical lifespan of 840 days, were given weekly injections of the blood component. The researchers noted a 22.7 per cent increase to a median 1,031 days.

Zhang Chenyu, co-leader of the study, and colleagues from the School of Life Sciences at Nanjing University, said the injections also ameliorated age-related functional decline in aged mice, including in the hippocampus, muscles, heart, testes and bones.

The researchers’ findings caused alarm among some of China’s science news readers. One comment on an article reporting on the study for the Jinri Toutiao website asked “how much blood does it take to keep up this kind of treatment? I dare not think about it”.

Another commenter said that “if a large amount of rejuvenation factors are contained in the blood of babies, I don’t know how many babies will suffer”.

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