Originally published September 7 2005
Insulin-blocking protein extends lifespan in mice
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A study in the journal Science shows mice genetically engineered to overexpress the klotho protein, a gene that blocks the function of insulin, lived longer lives, which may have implications for helping humans live longer lives.
Klotho, the Greek Fate, spun out the thread of human life and sometimes cut it short.
Klotho, the protein, makes mice -- and potentially people -- live longer by blocking the function of insulin.
That's what researchers here are saying after experiments in which mice were genetically engineered to overexpress the klotho protein.
Eight years ago, Dr. Kuro-o and colleagues showed that mice that didn't have the klotho gene aged and died prematurely.
The study is "a pleasant surprise," said George Martin, M.D., a specialist in aging at the University of Washington in Seattle, because it implies that there are common mechanisms that animals use to delay aging.
Such mechanisms would be ways that an organism could "hunker down in bad times" -- a trade-off between immediate reproduction in poor conditions and living longer in the hope that better times would come later.
And, in fact, in the Texas study, the engineered mice did have fewer offspring, he noted.
"I was skeptical of their paper in 1997," Dr. Martin said, because many things could account for a shorter lifespan.
The klotho protein, Dr. Kuro-o said, circulates in the blood and represses the intracellular signals of insulin and insulin-like growth factor-1.
Such inhibition has been shown to increase lifespan in fruit flies and roundworms, he said.
Since the human and mouse version of the gene are almost identical, he said, it seems likely that it performs the same function in humans, and indeed a study in 2002 by Johns Hopkins researchers found an association between aging and the human klotho gene.
Having two copies of a less-common variant of klotho is twice as prevalent in infants as in people over age 65, discovered Hal Dietz, Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins -- a result that suggests people born with the double variant die sooner than others.
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