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Feel as though you’re wrinkled and pruned well before your time? Facial creams and body lotions unable to sustain your skin’s youthful complexion? If so, you’ll be thrilled to learn that scientists believe they’ve found a way to reverse the ageing process. Seriously.
Wrinkles be gone? Not quite. Image: kaibara87/Flickr.
As if halting the body’s gradual decline weren’t enough, experts at the University of Berkeley in California claim the breakthrough reverses ageing by rebuilding withered muscle tissue. And, far from merely being an unproven research theory, the team of university scientists have already demonstrated the process in the laboratory.
“Our study shows that the ability of old human muscle to be maintained and repaired by muscle stem cells can be restored to youthful vigour given the right mix of biochemical signals,” commented University of Berkeley’s Professor Irina Conboy regarding the potential advancements.
The study, which included around 15 male volunteers aged 21-24 and 15 male volunteers aged 68-74, involved the biopsy removal of sample thigh muscle and enforced atrophy for a two-week period in a leg cast.
When the casts were removed, the study group exercised with weights to repair their wasted muscles, with further monitoring samples taken from their legs three days and four weeks into the regenerative process.
The study revealed that the younger group’s muscle repair benefited from the influence of four times more regenerative stem cells than the older group of volunteers, which not only required more time to repair their damaged muscle but also suffered increased inflammation and scarring.
Subsequent research enabled the scientists to locate the enzyme “mitogen-activated protein kinase” or MAPK, which they discovered influences a biological pathway directly connected to the efficiency of strong and quick muscle repair. By treating older muscle in a solution of MAPK, the team was able to significantly improve its regeneration levels.
The University of Berkeley study, which was published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, was conducted with the assistance of researchers from the Institute of Sports Medicine and Centre of Healthy Ageing at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
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