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Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at the Salk Institute found a drug candidate aimed at preventing Alzheimer's disease also appeared to have anti-aging benefits such as better memory and cognition, and better physical health, when tested on mice. The research has been published in the journal Aging .

The drug, developed by the Salk Institute team, is called J147. It was specifically designed to combat one of the major risk factors in 99 percent of Alzheimer's cases, old age. However, it was only designed to target one specific factor of old age, neurotoxicity. This is the exposure to toxic substances that damage nervous tissue and neurons, and is a major cause of Alzheimer's, which is estimated to affect up to 46.8 million people worldwide.

"Initially, the impetus was to test this drug in a novel animal model that was more similar to 99 percent of Alzheimer's cases," says lead author Antonio Currais, a member of Professor David Schubert's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at Salk. "We did not predict we'd see this sort of anti-aging effect, but J147 made old mice look like they were young, based upon a number of physiological parameters."

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